The global notebook market will be affected if China’s Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), the world’s fourth-largest PC vendor, merges with Japanese PC unit NEC Corp, an Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) executive said on Saturday.
“If the merger happens, it will put pressure on our notebook sales in Japan because of NEC’s high market share there, making it a little more difficult for us to become one of the world’s top three PC brands,” Asustek chief executive officer Jerry Shen (沈振來) said on the sideline of the company’s lunar year-end party.
On Friday, Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun said Lenovo and NEC, which topped Japan’s PC market with an 18 percent share in 2009 and ranked 12th in the global PC market with a 0.9 percent share last year, were in the final stages of talks on a tie-up of their personal computer businesses.
The companies hope to boost their competitiveness through larger economies of scale by integrating their development, production and materials procurement operations in a bid to catch up with global giants, such as Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), the paper said.
HP led the global PC market with a 17.9 percent share last year, followed by Acer Inc (宏碁) with 12.9 percent, Dell Inc with 12 percent, Lenovo with 9.7 percent and Toshiba Corp with 5.4 percent, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.
Lenovo’s shipments grew 37.3 percent last year to 33.97 million units from 24.74 million units in 2009, far exceeding worldwide average growth of 13.8 percent, Gartner said.
Lenovo’s growth was driven by strong demand for commercial PCs in China and its expansion into consumer markets outside of China, the researcher said.
Asked if Asustek had any merger plans, Shen said the company preferred to rely on “organic growth” in the short term, particularly in China, which meant increasing production capacity internally instead of merging with other companies.
Asustek also intends to expand its distribution channels for consumer PCs to smaller cities in China, while at the same time increasing its sales force to promote commercial PC sales in China, Shen said.
As for establishing a new operating base in China, Shen said the company had not yet decided whether to locate the new base in Chongqing or Chengdu.
He said plans for the project would be finalized in the first half of this year and would follow moves by many other Taiwanese high-tech companies into the inland Chinese market.
Asustek aims to consolidate its position among the world’s top three mobile PC makers this year with a lift from tablet computers, chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠) said at the party.
“This year, we plan to strengthen our current status among the world’s top three mobile PC makers as our tablet computers have recently received positive reviews from Bloomberg Businessweek at the tech gadget fair in the United States,” Shih said.
According to the US magazine, Asustek’s newly unveiled tablets — Eee Pad Slider and Eee Pad Transformer, have been selected as two of the top 10 tablet devices with best prospects at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, taking the second and the third places respectively.
First place went to Apple Inc’s iPad, which has become the bestseller in the tablet segment since its launch in April last year.
“As long as we maintain our efforts in design thinking, I believe they will transfer into a bigger market share,” Shih said.
Earlier this month, media reports said that Asustek hoped its worldwide tablet computer shipments would reach at least 1 million units this year, while the global tablet market is forecast to approach 40 to 50 million units this year.
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
RSS