Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), the world’s second-largest contract notebook computer maker, has secured assembly orders from Austrian crystal and jewelry company Swarovski AG to make its smartwatches and is to begin large-scale production next quarter, people familiar with the matter said.
“That will help Compal to expand its presence in the global smartwatch industry and improve its profitability this year after it tapped into the smartwatch segment by shipping nearly 600,000 smartwatches for Fossil Group Inc last year,” said the people, who asked not to be named as the matter involves Compal’s clients.
The Taipei-based company produces a wide range of electronics, including all-in-one computers, tablet computers, smartphones, servers and LCD TVs.
The products are to be produced at the company’s factory in Kunshan, China, the people said, adding that Swarovski would design the smartwatch and supply diamonds and other jewels for them.
Compal’s income for assembling the products is to be almost 50 percent of the market price, which would be of significant benefit to its revenue, because the products are likely to be priced at nearly 1 million euros (US$1.07 million), the sources said.
Swarovski is to unveil its own Android Wear smartwatch at the Baselworld Watch and Jewelery Show in Switzerland in March, with the product running Qualcomm Inc’s Snapdragon chipset, Qualcomm said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, this month.
The sources said Compal is also in talks with luxury brands Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada and Michael Kors to develop smartwatches this year.
Taiwanese contract manufacturers have been developing their assembly businesses for smart devices, including wearables, in an effort to offset weakness in the PC and smartphone industries in the past two years.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), which makes MacBooks for Apple Inc, became the sole assembler of the Apple Watch series in 2015, while Inventec Corp (英業達) entered the supply chain of Fitbit Inc’s wearable devices last year.
Unlike its Taiwanese peers that focus on wearables that feature healthcare and fitness functions, Compal’s strategy is to mainly collaborate with high-end brands in the fashion industry, because the products have higher margins, company officials said.
The gross margin for notebooks is usually between 3 and 4 percent — less than 4 percent for the Apple Watch — while gross margin for Swarovski smartwatches could exceed 10 percent, the officials said.
Compal president Ray Chen (陳瑞聰) on Jan. 13 told reporters that the company’s growth momentum this year is expected to be driven by Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including smartwatches and home devices.
Shipments of IoT devices are estimated to climb from 5.4 million last year to between 10 million and 12 million units this year, of which smartwatches are to account for 1.2 million units this year, Chen said.
Chen said revenue contribution from Compal’s non-notebook products are to reach more than 30 percent of the firm’s total revenue this year, up from last year’s 26 percent.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained