The nation’s leading contract notebook computer manufacturers should see shipments regain growth momentum this quarter, after shipments weakened last quarter due to supply constraints and the effect of the Lunar New Year holiday, local media reported last week.
However, it remains unclear how shipments from the nation’s five major notebook computer original design manufacturers (ODMs) would fare in the second half of the year, amid uncertainty over possible key component shortages, logistics bottlenecks due to COVID-19 lockdowns and rising inflationary pressure, the reports said.
The five companies are Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶), Wistron Corp (緯創), Inventec Corp (英華達) and Pegatron Corp (和碩). As Taiwan’s notebook computer ODMs account for more than 90 percent of global production, their shipment momentum has a high correlation with the dynamic of the global market.
Photo: Reuters
Global notebook computer shipments grew 19 percent year-on-year to 268 million units last year because of strong commercial demand in the final quarter of the year, Boston-based research firm Strategy Analytics said in a report on Jan. 31.
Strategy Analytics attributed the fourth-quarter performance to Windows 11 enterprise upgrades, which gave Windows notebook computers a boost during the quarter across all regions, despite a slowdown in Chromebook demand in the second half of last year.
In the first quarter of this year, shipments from the nation’s top five notebook ODMs reached 41.6 million to 41.7 million units, representing a quarterly decrease of nearly 20 percent, according to data compiled from the companies’ latest revenue updates released on Friday.
Quanta, the world’s largest contract notebook maker, shipped 16.9 million units last quarter, down 15 percent quarterly and 11 percent annually, while Compal, the world’s No. 2 contract laptop maker, reported shipments of 11.8 million units, down 26.7 percent from the previous quarter and 9.9 percent lower than a year earlier, company data showed.
Wistron, Inventec and Pegatron reported shipments of 5.6 million, 5 million and 2.3 million to 2.4 million units respectively, down 25.66 percent, 10.71 percent and 20 percent from the previous quarter.
On a yearly basis, the three makers’ shipments increased from 3.7 percent to 5 percent, as demand for hybrid work environments supported the developed market’s growth, while customers’ shift toward mobility boosted the emerging market.
The five ODMs said they have clear order visibility through the end of the first half of the year, with Inventec expecting a slight growth in notebook shipments this quarter, while Compal and Wistron forecast shipments would grow about 10 percent compared with the first quarter.
Pegatron also maintained its previous forecast and estimated that second-quarter shipments would increase by 25 to 30 percent from the first quarter, but Quanta said it was difficult to provide guidance for second-quarter shipments due to uncertainties.
Given the lingering shortage of key components and lockdowns in Shanghai and Kunshan, China, the five ODMs said that the adverse effects from the disease prevention measures on the notebook computer supply chain were expected to emerge later this month, local media reported.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would also affect the European market, while rising global inflation and port congestion would also impact shipments in the second half of the year, the companies said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Alphabet Inc CEO Sundar Pichai is deepening a push into enterprise software, signaling to investors at Google’s annual cloud conference that artificial intelligence (AI) agents — human-like digital assistants — are a lynchpin of its strategy to monetize AI. At the three-day conference in Las Vegas that started yesterday, Pichai and key Google executives aim to position the company’s AI tools as production-ready infrastructure for enterprise customers who are emerging as the industry’s most reliable revenue stream. Mountain View, California-based Google yesterday announced that it was unifying a set of AI products under the name “Gemini Enterprise.” Most notably, that involves rebranding and
RSS