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.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) market value closed above US$1 trillion for the first time in Taipei last week, with a raised sales forecast driven by robust artificial intelligence (AI) demand. TSMC saw its Taiwanese shares climb to a record high on Friday, a near 50 percent rise from an April low. That has made it the first Asian stock worth more than US$1 trillion, since PetroChina Co (中國石油天然氣) briefly reached the milestone in 2007. As investors turned calm after their aggressive buying on Friday, amid optimism over the chipmaker’s business outlook, TSMC lost 0.43 percent to close at NT$1,150