Local 3D printer manufacturer XYZprinting Inc (三緯) yesterday launched its first entry-level model for students, hoping to see shipments quadruple to 120,000 units this year.
Last year, XYZprinting sold more than 30,000 3D printers, mostly for household use and designers, a company executive said.
With such growth, XYZprinting will turn a profit this year, chairman Simon Shen (沈軾榮) said on the sidelines of a news conference.
Photo: CNA
Broadening its product lineup, the company plans to roll out its first 3D food printer and a commercial model by the end of this year, Shen said.
“We are not worried at all [about growth]. We are seeing a continuous rising trend in demand,” Shen said.
MARKET OUTLOOK
Global shipments of 3D printers are expected to more than double to 217,350 units this year and expand to 2.3 million units in 2018, compared with 108,151 units last year, market researcher Gartner Inc projected.
“This year, the US will remain the biggest export destination for the company. We expect China to catch up with the US next year and to become a market as big as the US,” Shen said.
The market is expected to benefit from Beijing’s plans to equip each elementary school in China with a 3D printer.
“Beijing is encouraging young people to turn their design ideas into products,” Shen said.
LENOVO LINK
The three-year-old XYZprinting, a subsidiary of the New Kinpo Group (新金寶集團), is upbeat about the Chinese market, as the company has teamed up with Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) to sell 3D printers there via China’s number one PC brand’s e-commerce subsidiary.
The company’s new model, dubbed the Da Vinci Jr 1.0, carries a price tag of NT$9,999 per unit and is XYZprinting’s first effort to bring 3D printing technology to the education sector.
In addition to the developed economies like the US, Europe and Japan, XYZprinting is expanding its reach markets including China, Iran, Turkey and Thailand.
To cope with its fast growth, XYZprinting has increased its workforce to more than 200 people, from 40 people since the company’s inception in 2013.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS