Acer Inc (宏碁) chief executive officer Jason Chen (陳俊聖) yesterday said the company’s Chromebooks and its new notebook computers are facing component and assembly shortages due to stronger-than-expected market demand.
The company has requested both suppliers and assemblers increase their capacity to ease the constraints, Chen said.
“Orders for Acer’s Chromebooks and notebooks are more than the company’s forecast when we launched a series of new products in Berlin in September,” Chen told reporters on the sidelines of Acer’s forum on “smart city” development in Taipei.
HIGHER PRICES
The continued increase in the average selling prices of some components has also weighed on the supply situation, Chen said.
Chen declined to specify which components are in short supply, but industry sources said DRAM, NAND flash, LCD panels and graphics cards have seen strong price rebounds this year due to a lack of supply in the past few months.
Acer has started to ship some products by air instead of its regular ocean freight services in an effort to deliver the goods to markets before the Christmas shopping season, Chen said.
He expects the shortages to ease before the end of this year after the Christmas shopping season orders have been digested.
SERIOUS SHORTAGE
Demand for Acer’s Chromebooks, especially in the education and business sectors, has caused a serious shortage of the company’s products, Chen said.
While the company’s rivals are lowering their Chromebook prices to gain market share, Acer is focused on profit rather than on market share, Chen said.
The average prices of Acer’s Chromebooks are between 10 percent and 30 percent higher than its peers, he added.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
The global server market is expected to grow 12.8 percent annually this year, with artificial intelligence (AI) servers projected to account for 16.5 percent, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure by major cloud service providers (CSPs), market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. Global AI server shipments this year are expected to increase 28 percent year-on-year to more than 2.7 million units, driven by sustained demand from CSPs and government sovereign cloud projects, TrendForce analyst Frank Kung (龔明德) told the Taipei Times. Demand for GPU-based AI servers, including Nvidia Corp’s GB and Vera Rubin rack systems, is expected to remain high,
RSS