A government-funded research institute issued a slew of reports that dismissed the negative impact of SARS on the technology industry at the end of last week. In five separate reports looking at the performance of desktop computers, laptop computers, servers, computer disk drives, and digital cameras in the second quarter of this year, the Market Intelligence Center (MIC) downplayed the impact of the SARS virus on the nation's technology producers.
The main reason for the limited impact of SARS is that infections have not spread to Taiwan's customers, according to the MIC.
"With over 70 percent of shipments bound for European, North American and Japanese markets where SARS has not taken root, and facing only slight impact from the Chinese market, volume forecasts for the second quarter of [this year] have been revised downward between 1 percent and 2 percent to approximately 5.8 million units," the desktop PC report said.
Thirteen percent of the nation's desktop computer sales go to China, which is expected to see a drop in sales of between 15 and 20 percent in the second quarter as nervous consumers avoid computer salesrooms, but MIC does not believe this will impact Taiwan's second-quarter performance.
The report on digital cameras also rejects a drop in sales due to a slow market in China.
"Though SARS is hitting Asia full on, Taiwanese digital-still camera makers' main markets are in Europe and the US, and [the] Chinese share of [the] Taiwanese digital-still camera market is very low, all of which points to few market demand troubles," the MIC report said.
Nonetheless, Taiwanese digital camera shipments will drop to 2.1 million units in the second quarter, which represents a drop in value of 30 percent from the first quarter. The report claims this is due to the "traditionally slow season" for digital camera sales.
Notebook computer sales are shielded from the SARS effect because most laptops are bought by businesses, the MIC report said.
"Considering that most notebook PCs are sold in the corporate market, the necessity for businesses to carry on operations will sustain growth of notebook PC sales, shielding notebook PC shipments from the impact of SARS [as] seen in the Chinese desktop PC market," the report said. Notebook shipments are expected to rise between 2 and 5 percent in the second quarter.
Corporations also need servers, which should protect the server market from a downturn in sales.
"As servers are mainly used for infrastructure deployment in the corporate sector, barring forced closures enterprises will be sticking to scheduled server upgrades and procurement to maintain operations," the MIC report said. "The corporate server market has hence sustained much lighter impact from SARS than the consumer market thus far."
The worldwide server market will reach 1.3 million units in the second quarter, of which the nation is expected to sell 426,000 units. The vast majority of Taiwan's server output goes to large OEM contracts for International Business Machines Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Computer Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and NEC Computer Corp, which account for 95 percent of the nation's server sales, according to the MIC.
The only product for which the MIC conceded a possible negative impact from SARS was optical disk drives, which includes DVD and CD-ROM drives for personal computers. The MIC has revised its initial forecast for an 8 percent drop in sales from the first to the second quarter to a 10.3-percent drop, representing 19 million units worth US$709 million.
"The Taiwanese optical disk drive industry's heavy dependence on the Chinese market is the chief instigator of the shipment value decline," the report said. "Including built-in and add-on drives, China accounts for roughly 50 percent of Taiwanese shipments. The rapid spread of SARS through southern and northern China since April has cleared PC store floors of shoppers, causing optical disk-drive demand to taper off," it said.
PCs with built-in drives are expected to see a 16.7 percent sales decline in China, and add-on drives are forecasted to witness a 30 percent drop, the report said.
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