Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world’s second-largest contract notebook maker, yesterday said it expected sales from its mobile device manufacturing business to triple and account for 30 percent of the company’s total revenue in 2015 after it merges with handset maker Compal Communications Inc (華寶).
“The merger [between Compal and Compal Communications] is part of the company’s broader plan to gradually move into the mobile device industry in the post-PC era,” Compal spokesman Gary Lu (呂清雄) said by telephone yesterday.
Before the merger, Compal was a parent company of Compal Communications.
In a filing submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Thursday, Compal said it planned to buy out its smartphone and tablet unit, Compal Communications, for NT$16.12 billion (US$544.91 million) in an all-cash offer by Feb. 27 next year.
This year, sales from Compal Communications’ smartphone and tablet manufacturing business were expected to reach NT$25 billion and account for 10 percent of Compal’s total revenue for the year after the completion of the first-phase of the merger this week, Lu said.
As Compal set a goal of obtaining orders from three to four new clients every year, Lu said the sales contribution from Compal’s mobile device assembling unit is expected to triple to NT$75 billion, accounting for 30 percent of the company’s total sales in 2015.
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“With corporate resources reorganized, Compal will be in a better position in talks with potential clients,” Lu said.
Asked if Compal had been selected as the original design manufacturers of Apple Inc’s iPhone or iPad products, the spokesperson said: “It’s our policy not to disclose background information on the company’s clients.”
However, UBS analyst Patrick Chen (陳鈞寧) said Compal is to begin assembling Apple’s iPad Mini products next year based on information he had obtained.
“It should be possible for Compal to achieve its goal [of tripling sales contribution from mobile device manufacturing business by 2015], and the sales driver is likely to be Apple’s iPad Mini products,” Chen said.
Regarding product mix, Chen said Compal Communications currently supplies smartphones for Nokia Ojy and Sony Corp and produces tablets for Acer Inc (宏碁), Lenovo Group (聯想) and Amazon.com Inc.
Given Compal’s ongoing preparations to qualify as Apple’s industry partner, Chen forecast that the firm would obtain new orders soon and see its sales contribution from its smartphone and tablet manufacturing business expand and account for at least 15 percent of the company’s total sales next year.
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