Pegatron Corp (和碩), one of the main assemblers of Apple Inc’s iPhones, yesterday said it does not have a layoff plan, although one of its notebook clients is making moves toward leaving the consumer notebook market.
Some Chinese-language media have reported that the company’s team handling Toshiba Corp notebook orders is expected to be adjusted because the Japanese electronics maker is going to leave the market.
The Taipei-based company declined to comment on a single client, but said resource reallocation based on the progress of a project is normal practice among original design manufacturers.
“We will not layoff our employees because of the shrinking scale of a project or a completion of a project,” a Pegatron investor relations official told the Taipei Times.
The official said that once a client project is finished, Pegatron reallocates the employees working on that project to other projects.
Toshiba is gradually shifting its focus away from the consumer end of the notebook market to the commercial side, and many analysts expect the move to impact Pegatron’s notebook business in the short term due to declining orders.
However, one analyst, who declined to be named, said Toshiba’s shift would not affect Pegatron’s operations in the long term because the Japanese company is not the Taiwanese company’s largest notebook client and Pegatron could try to seek more orders from other companies to offset the loss.
Pegatron’s notebook segment accounted for 14 percent of the firm’s revenues in the third quarter of last year.
The company is scheduled to release its earnings result for the fourth quarter of last year on Thursday next week, with an updated sales contribution from the notebook business.
In other developments, Pegatron said it is moving its operations in Breda, Netherlands, to its European headquarters in Ostrava, Czech Republic.
Pegatron said it has 2,000 employees at the Ostrava headquarters with comprehensive technical capabilities in production, repair and logistics.
“The decision to consolidate our European operations in one site was taken to integrate resources, increase capacity and enhance manufacturing efficiency,” the company said.
Pegatron chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) had previously said the firm entered the repair and maintenance business after it split from Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) in 2007.
Tung said the business makes only a “few million” New Taiwan dollars in net profit at the moment, but it is a good business and Pegatron is looking to expand it.
The company also has a repair and logistics centers near Narita International Airport in Tokyo, one near the Taiwan Taiyuan International Airport, one in Shanghai and one in the US, Tung said.
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