Wistron Corp (緯創), one of Apple Inc’s iPhone assemblers, expects business growth to continue this year, after posting a record revenue for last year, company chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘) said.
“This year’s business will be driven by demand for smartphones, Internet of Things [IoT] devices, servers and desktops,” Lin told reporters on the sidelines of the company’s annual banquet for employees on Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
Wistron expects capacity expansion to meet client demand after the board approved a combined investment of US$208.67 million to expand production capacity at its plant in Kunshan, China, which analysts say is to support capacity expansion for 5.5-inch iPhones.
“We expect Wistron to become the key assembler of 5.5-inch iPhones in the second half of 2017 and into 2018,” Credit Suisse Group AG’s Taiwan equity research division wrote in a client note on Monday last week.
Wistron’s iPhone production could reach 16.5 million units this year, up from 8 million last year, Credit Suisse said.
Under an unspecified client’s request, the board in November last year approved a capital injection of US$33.5 million to convert its after-sales service center in Bengaluru, India, into a plant.
Bloomberg News on Friday last week reported that Apple plans to partner with Wistron to assemble iPhones at the Indian plant.
However, Lin declined to confirm if the plant is to focus on Apple’s iPhone business, saying that Wistron has a “wide range” of clients for the Indian market.
“The plant in India can assemble smartphones or notebooks. It depends on the clients’ requests,” Lin said.
The Indian plant is scheduled to become operational in next quarter, Wistron said.
Apart from smartphones, Wistron also manufactures laptops, tablets, flat TVs, LCD monitors and data-center servers for clients.
While the PC industry is shrinking, Wistron’s notebook computer shipments, accounting for 40 percent of the firm’s total revenue, are forecast to stay flat from last year’s 19.4 million units, Lin said.
When asked if Wistron has plans to increase its investments in the US to meet US President Donald Trump’s call to move manufacturing jobs to the US, Lin said Wistron would do what benefits its clients.
“I don’t think the policy will happen in a short period of time, but surely we can do that if that is the industry trend,” Lin said.
Wistron reported accumulative sales of NT$659.41 billion (US$20.91 billion) last year, up 5.8 percent from NT$623.27 billion in 2015 and marking the highest level in the company’s history.
The “smart” devices segment, which contributed more than 20 percent of its total revenue, was the main growth driver last year, the firm said.
Credit Suisse expects Wistron to generate sales of NT$803.3 billion this year, up 22 percent year-on-year and 8 percent higher than the market consensus forecast.
Wistron’s net profit reached NT$1.51 billion in the first three quarters of last year, which grew mildly by 1.34 percent from NT$1.45 billion in the same period a year earlier.
The company is scheduled to release its earnings result for last quarter next month.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
A new worry has been rippling across the stock market lately: Entire businesses, not just their employees, might be thrown out of work. While most economists say fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) job apocalypse are overblown, seismic shifts have happened in the past after big tech breakthroughs. The IT revolution of the 1990s led to a surge in productivity that sped up the US economy for several years. It also rendered companies or even industries largely redundant — from travel agents and stockbrokers to classified advertising and newspapers, or video rental stores. Economists expect AI would deliver higher productivity,
RSS