Wistron Corp’s (緯創) consolidated revenue last month grew 37.07 percent sequentially to NT$60.88 billion (US$2.03 billion), the highest in 11 months, the world’s third-biggest contract notebook maker said on Monday. However, last month’s figure represented an 11.18 percent decline from NT$68.54 billion in March last year.
Total revenue in the January-to-March period amounted to NT$158.25 billion, down 10.58 percent from NT$176.97 billion during the same period a year ago, the New Taipei City (新北市)-based company said in a stock exchange filing.
Due to seasonality and consumers switching to handheld devices, Wistron said its notebook shipments shrank 16 percent quarter-on-quarter to about 6.5 million units last quarter.
For this quarter, Wistron expects flat notebook shipments quarter-on-quarter because of increasing demand for tablet computers. Still, the company forecasts a sequential increase in sales this quarter, propelled by shipments of new products.
Calvin Wei (魏建發), an analyst at Yuanta Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧), yesterday attributed Wistron’s sales increase last month to positive market reception of new BlackBerry products the Z10 and Q10.
Wei forecast that Wistron’s smartphone shipments would increase 34 percent to 18.1 million units this year, adding that smartphone products would be the key growth drivers this year.
Meanwhile, Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶電腦), the world’s second-largest contract laptop maker, yesterday said its first-quarter consolidated revenue expanded 3.38 percent year-on-year to NT$167.23 billion, while Inventec Corp (英業達), the world’s fourth-largest contract laptop maker, saw first-quarter revenue drop by 1.65 percent to NT$100.76 billion from a year ago.
US-based research firm Gartner Inc yesterday said that global shipments of tablets and mobile phones would increase 69.83 percent and 7.39 percent to 197 million units and 1.88 billion units respectively this year, while those of desktops and laptops together would decrease 7.63 percent to 315 million units.
In its latest industry report, Gartner forecast that 1.875 billion mobile phones would be sold this year, including 1 billion smartphones, compared with 675 million units last year.
“The trend towards smartphones and tablets will have much wider implications than hardware displacement,” Carolina Milanesi, a research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.”
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