Xiaomi Corp (小米) is likely to ship only 300,000 notebook computers this year, lower than market estimates of 1 million units, according to the Chinese company’s supply chain sources.
The lower shipment estimates for this year comes after the Chinese company postponed the launch date of its laptops by several quarters, sources said.
Inventec Corp (英業達), Xiaomi’s long-term assembly partner, in September last year said it would help the company make its first-ever notebook product in the first quarter of this year.
The Chinese company later picked Wistron Corp (緯創) over Compal Electronics Co (仁寶) to be the second assembler for its notebooks, people who are familiar with the matter told the Taipei Times.
Both Inventec and Wistron are expected to start shipping Xiaomi notebooks from this quarter — 150,000 units of the 12-inch notebooks from Inventec and 150,000 units of the 13-inch model from Wistron, sources said.
The Chinese company is scheduled to hold a product launch on Wednesday next week in Beijing, which is widely anticipated to introduce its new Redmi smartphone and two notebooks.
Inventec yesterday confirmed that it would start to ship Xiaomi’s 12-inch notebook from the end of this month, but refused to say if projected total shipments would be 150,000 units.
“I can only say the initial shipments for the products are not massive,” an Inventec official said by telephone.
Wistron declined to comment on its clients.
Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) said it is possible that Xiaomi’s notebook shipments would only reach 300,000 units this year due to time constraint for its suppliers.
In addition, the Chinese company might post its first annual decline in smartphone shipments this year, because of “very” weak demand in the first quarter, Yuanta analyst Jeff Pu (蒲得宇) said by telephone.
Pu said that Chinese smartphone demand was bleak in the first quarter, but improved significantly in the second quarter, with the strength extending into this quarter.
However, the recovery would not be enough to offset the weakness in the first quarter, he said.
“We forecast that Xiaomi’s smartphone shipments would drop more than 17 percent to 58 million units this year from last year’s 70 million, which would impact Xiaomi’s smartphone assemblers,” Pu said.
However, Inventec said Xiaomi has not lowered its order forecast for smartphones for this year.
“Inventec still expects to ship between 40 million and 45 million handsets this year, including smartphones for Xiaomi,” a company official said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
Handset camera lens maker Largan Precision Co (大立光) on Sunday reported a 6.71 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for the third quarter, despite revenue last month hitting the highest level in 11 months. Third-quarter revenue was NT$17.68 billion (US$581.2 million), compared with NT$18.95 billion a year earlier, the company said in a statement. The figure was in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$17.9 billion, but missed the market consensus estimate of NT$18.97 billion. The third-quarter revenue was a 51.44 percent increase from NT$11.67 billion in the second quarter, as the quarter is usually the peak
Nvidia Corp’s major server production partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) reported 10.99 percent year-on-year growth in quarterly sales, signaling healthy demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Revenue totaled NT$2.06 trillion (US$67.72 billion) in the last quarter, in line with analysts’ projections, a company statement said. On a quarterly basis, revenue was up 14.47 percent. Hon Hai’s businesses cover four primary product segments: cloud and networking, smart consumer electronics, computing, and components and other products. Last quarter, “cloud and networking products delivered strong growth, components and other products demonstrated significant growth, while smart consumer electronics and computing products slightly declined,” compared with the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
RSS