Whether Apple Inc discloses its hardware unit sales figures has no bearing on the prospects of the US technology giant’s supply chain, contract electronics manufacturer Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) said yesterday.
Apple, which on Thursday announced its financial results for last quarter, said the company would no longer be providing unit sales for its smartphones, tablets and computers starting this quarter.
While Apple’s decision has sparked concerns that the company is trying to downplay a tougher and increasingly saturated smartphone market, Tung said that business is proceeding as usual at Pegatron.
Pegatron is a key assembler of more than half the shipments of this year’s iPhone XR and a smaller share of the iPhone XS Max.
Tung reiterated that Pegatron does not comment on its customers.
Tung also addressed previous reports of a labor shortage at Pegatron’s plants in China, and said that the issue has been largely resolved, he was quoted as saying in a report by the Chinese-language Economic Daily News.
The company was short-handed at the beginning of September, but its ranks were quickly filled by the end of that month, Tung said.
Earlier, Tung had said that Pegatron’s factories are capable of raising its workforce by several times to accommodate major product launches by clients.
Labor demand could also shift widely on a weekly basis, he said.
As the iPhone XR began its first shipments last month, Tung said that October has always been a part of the company’s peak season, while implying a positive outlook for the final quarter.
Apple’s newest iPhones helped push its third-quarter shipments to 46.9 million units, up 0.5 percent from the 46.7 million units recorded in the same period last year, with a global market share of 13.2 percent, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corp (IDC) published yesterday.
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) once again beat Apple to take the second position, with shipments of 52 million units and a market share of 14.6 percent.
Samsung Electronics Co continued to lead the market with a 20.3 percent share on shipments of 72.2 million units, IDC said.
However, global smartphone sales are slowing, as total shipments fell 6 percent year-on-year to 355.2 million units last quarter, marking a fourth quarterly drop in a row, it said.
China, which accounted for one-third of global smartphone shipments, also saw demand drop 13.4 percent annually in the quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarterly decline, IDC said.
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li