Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s biggest notebook computer maker, yesterday said that net profit last quarter declined 20 percent quarterly as a shortage of Intel Corp central processing units (CPUs) weighed on shipments.
A spike in non-operating losses to NT$311 million (US$10 million) due to a strong US dollar that increased its interest payments drove down net profit, Compal said.
Net profit fell to NT$1.35 billion from NT$1.7 billion in the final quarter of last year, and was down 3 percent from NT$1.39 billion a year earlier.
Last quarter’s net profit was the weakest in seven quarters.
Earnings per share dropped to NT$0.31 from NT$0.39 in the previous quarter and NT$0.32 a year earlier.
However, gross margin improved to 3.6 percent, from 3.1 percent in the prior quarter and 3.4 percent a year earlier.
Laptop shipments this quarter would likely grow by a mid-single-digit percentage as the CPU shortage continues to limit shipments, while non-PC product shipments are expected to grow by a double-digit percentage from last quarter, Compal said.
Separately, HTC Corp (宏達電) yesterday posted losses of NT$2.5 billion for the first quarter of this year as it struggled to transition into a virtual-reality (VR) headset maker from a handset supplier.
It was the company’s fourth consecutive quarter of losses.
The figure compared with losses of NT$4.4 billion in the previous quarter and net profit of NT$21.1 billion a year earlier.
Losses per share were NT$2.98 last quarter, while gross margin was 14.7 percent, the company said in a statement.
HTC’s sales momentum last month continued to lose steam as revenue sank 71.77 percent annually to NT$592.65 million, after plunging 66.51 percent to NT$2.94 billion in the first quarter, as sales of VR products failed to offset a decline in handset sales.
It last month said that it had begun early shipments of its new VR headset, Viv Focus Plus.
The new headset gives enterprise users the ability to seamlessly interact with virtual environments with the same freedom as PC VR devices, HTC said.
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],”
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
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