Super-light laptops, such as ultrabooks, will become the next growth engine for notebook computers this year, according to a Taipei-based research firm.
WitsView, the panel research division of market intelligence provider TrendForce Corp (集邦科技), forecast recently that notebook shipments will reach 213.5 million units this year, up 9.4 percent from 195.1 million units last year.
Regular notebooks will increase 13.3 percent year-on-year from 172.8 million units last year to 195 million units this year, while netbook shipments will dip 17 percent from 22.3 million units to 18.5 million units during the same -period, WitsView said.
Overall shipment growth will be driven mainly by Intel Corp’s new ultrabook platform “Ivy Bridge,” which is expected to be launched in the second quarter of the year, as well as the roll-out of Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system in the second half, WitsView said.
The research firm predicted that ultrabooks would account for about 10 percent of all notebook shipments this year, after accounting for less than 5 percent of total shipments last year.
In addition to Ultrabooks, many PC brands also plan to launch laptops that are slimmed down to between 22mm and 25mm thick, which will further speed up the adoption of such lightweight products in the notebook market, WitsView said.
In October, Taiwanese PC maker Acer Inc (宏碁) said it planned to ship between 250,000 and 300,000 units of its Aspire S3 super-thin laptops in the fourth quarter.
Acer said it expected the Ultrabook line to account for between 25 percent and 35 percent of the company’s total notebook shipments this year.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) said last month that it expected shipments of its Ultrabook model, dubbed the “Zenbook,” to hit the company’s fourth quarter target of 300,000 units.
The company hopes to build on the growing popularity of Ultrabooks to increase shipments of notebook computers by 22 percent this year.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS