Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s fifth-largest PC brand, has forecast that its sales will increase this month from last month and that the growth will carry into the next quarter, when it will start shipping new products.
“Overall, demand for PCs is weakening due to the rise of mobile devices,” Asustek chief financial officer David Chang (張偉明) said by telephone yesterday.
“The major drivers of company sales this year will be tablet products, but macroeconomic conditions will determine how strong demand for those products will be,” Chang added.
He made the remarks after Asustek reported that sales last month grew 2.33 percent to NT$33.4 billion (US$1.12 billion) from April, but fell 6.9 percent from a year earlier, a decline Chang attributed to weak demand for traditional PCs.
The company’s tablet and notebook shipments are expected to contract by 10 percent this quarter from last quarter, Chang said.
Asustek’s guidance for notebook shipments and sales this quarter remained unchanged as it expects both shipment volume and sales to remain flat at 4.7 million units and NT$105.2 billion respectively in the January-to-March period.
However, since the company will start shipping new products next quarter, tablet and notebook shipments are expected to grow quarter-on-quarter next quarter, driving up Asustek’s sales, he added.
Meanwhile, Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s fourth-largest notebook vendor, said sales last month fell 19.22 percent year-on-year to NT$26.3 billion.
On an annual basis, the company’s sales have been contracting for 11 consecutive months, though viewed by month, sales rose 1.93 percent last month from April.
In the face of slack demand for notebooks, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s top contract laptop maker, said accumulated sales during the first five months of the year dropped 16.05 percent.
Quanta said its sales last month fell 0.54 percent month-on-month and 14.21 percent year-on-year to NT$61.07 billion, although notebook shipments increased 13.8 percent to 3.3 million units last month.
Accumulated sales in the period between January and last month fell 16.05 percent year-on-year amid clients’ inventory adjustments, Quanta investor relations official Alai Chiu (邱珮倫) said by telephone.
Driven by rising demand for large-sized data centers, Quanta’s cloud-related business sales, including those of cloud-based servers and tablets, are expected to grow more than 15 percent this year, Chiu said.
Meanwhile, Pegatron Corp (和碩), an assembler of Apple Inc products, reported that sales last month fell 0.01 percent year-on-year but rose 10.16 percent month-on-month to NT$72.05 billion.
Cumulatively, Pegatron’s sales during the first five months of the year expanded 15.36 percent to NT$358.77 billion from last year.
Contract notebook maker Wistron Corp (緯創) saw sales last month grow 15.89 percent month-on-month and 23.39 percent year-on-year to NT$58.66 billion. In the first five months, Wistron’s sales contracted 3.57 percent to NT$267.53 billion from a year earlier.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day