Electronics firms held a neutral view on the information and communication technology (ICT) market this quarter in the hope that growing global shipments of handsets and sales of wearable devices this year would offset contraction in PCs, the Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) said in a report.
A majority of electronics firms replied they believed the worst was over, TCA event organizer David Liu (劉文程) said by telephone yesterday.
To look into companies’ confidence about the economy and industry outlook, TCA in 2010 started conducting its “Computex Exhibitor Index,” which shows that companies are upbeat about the future if the result is close to “2” and downbeat if the figure is close to “1.”
For this quarter, the Computex Exhibitor Index climbed to 1.5 points after falling for three consecutive quarters since the second quarter of last year, TCA said.
According to the TCA’s survey, which observed 314 local and foreign electronics firms that rented booths at last year’s Computex tech show, companies that produce telecommunications equipment and mobile devices are most optimistic about their business outlook this quarter, Liu said.
“With clients placing more orders, some firms forecast the smartphone and tablet markets will stay promising for one to two years, and some even predict the wearable device market would become more profitable than the smartphone and tablet markets,” Liu said.
Based on volume of orders obtained from clients, firms that produce desktops and laptops, as well as components of the products, indicated their confidence about the ICT market had “greatly improved” from a year ago, Liu said.
Citing companies’ responses, Liu said many electronics companies remained upbeat about the ICT market this quarter because they anticipated consumers to purchase new desktops or laptops before Microsoft Corp ended its consumer services for PCs running the Windows XP operating system in April.
However, companies that manufacture touchpanels and displays are the most pessimistic about their business outlook this quarter because many forecast the touch-enabled laptop market would remain sluggish.
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