Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), the world’s fifth-largest PC brand, could miss its target of shipping 12 million tablet devices this year because of a “sudden drop in tablet industry demand” worldwide, UBS Securities Pte Ltd said yesterday.
“We believe Asustek will have to revise down its full-year shipment target,” Arthur Hsieh (謝宗文), chief electronics hardware analyst at UBS’ Taipei branch, said in a client note.
Hsieh said the brokerage had cut its tablet shipment forecast for Asustek by 24 percent for this year, meaning the company might only ship about 9.1 million tablets this year.
In the second quarter, Asustek shipped 2.3 million tablets, up 13.1 percent year-on-year, with a 4.6 percent share of the global market, the International Data Corp (IDC) said in a report on July 24.
Global tablet shipments grew 11 percent annually in the second quarter to 49.3 million units, but declined 1.5 percent from the first quarter because of the rise in popularity among consumers of large-screen smartphones, and longer-than-anticipated ownership cycles, IDC said.
UBS also expects Asustek to register a mild recovery in notebook computer shipment in the current quarter and lead its peers in launching a new 2-in-1 hybrid notebook model later this quarter or early next quarter.
Hsieh said the new Transformer Book T300 Chi using the Intel Core M processor could help drive the company’s overall notebook sales momentum next quarter, but UBS still cut its notebook computer shipment forecast for Asustek to 21 million units from 22 million units, the note said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS