Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁) and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s fourth and fifth-largest notebook makers, may face more market share loss this quarter after their shipments declined significantly last quarter, while Dell Inc is looking serious about returning to the personal computer (PC) market.
In the three months ending on Monday last week, Acer saw its PC shipments decline 22.6 percent year-on-year to 6.67 million units with a global market share of 8.3 percent, while Asustek reported a 22.5 percent decline in shipments to 4.92 million units for a 6.1 percent market share, Gartner Inc said on Wednesday.
ANNUAL
Meanwhile, the latest data compiled by the International Data Corp (IDC) on Wednesday showed Acer suffered a 34.5 percent annual decline in shipments to 5.48 million units and Asustek had a 34.1 percent fall to 4.21 million units in the quarter.
The two firms held a 6.7 percent and a 5.2 percent market share in IDC’s tallies respectively.
“Acer and Asustek are the worst performers in the third quarter, hurt by weakness in the segments where they are heavily exposed: consumer, Western Europe and emerging markets,” head of technology research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets Nicolas Baratte wrote in a note yesterday.
LIMITING FACTORS
Despite their efforts in developing hybrid devices and their emphasis on new designs, the lack of corporate PC portfolios at Acer and Asustek has limited their growth, leading Taipei-based Topology Research Institute (拓墣產業) to predict the two firms would register a decline of more than 20 percent in shipments this year.
Citigroup Global Markets also believes Dell Inc’s recent introduction of a new family of tablets and new laptops suggests that the US PC brand still has no plan to exit the industry anytime soon and it will reap share gains at the expense of Acer and Asustek.
On Wednesday last week, Dell introduced a slew of attractive new notebook and tablet models, which includes a 2-in-1 Ultrabook.
Citigroup analyst Wei Chen (陳思維) said such product offerings made clear that Dell’s intention to get back into the PC market and the company’s PC strategy could renew pricing pressure in the consumer PC segment, to which Acer and Asustek have large exposure.
“We believe that Asustek gained share in the consumer PC segment in 2011-2012 as Dell and HP retreated. With Dell reverting to a more aggressive PC strategy, easy share gains by Asustek and Acer will likely become a thing of the past,” Chen said in a note on Wednesday.
UNDERPERFORM
Shares of Acer have dropped 21.23 percent since the beginning of the year and those of Asustek have fallen 29.1 percent, both underperforming the 2.95 percent increase of the bellwether electronic stocks over the same period, the Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Acer ended 0.5 percent lower at NT$19.85 on Wednesday, while Asustek was down 1.49 percent to NT$231.5.
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