Apple Inc’s major manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) reported its slowest monthly sales growth since February, stoking concerns about demand momentum for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and iPhones.
Hon Hai, also a key server assembly partner to Nvidia Corp, yesterday reported sales of NT$804.85 billion (US$25.18 billion) for last month, up 8.59 percent year-on-year and marking the highest October level in the company’s history.
Analysts expect the company to grow its sales by 15 percent to NT$2.13 trillion this quarter.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, Bloomberg
Hon Hai’s revenue in the first 10 months of this year was NT$5.53 trillion, up 9.57 percent year-on-year and the highest for the period on record, company data showed.
The iPhone assembler’s tepid sales growth appeared to reinforce Apple’s weak forecast for the holiday quarter.
“Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, operations are anticipated to show both quarterly and yearly growth,” Hon Hai said in a statement, without giving details.
Hon Hai and other hardware suppliers are riding a wave of spending on servers and data centers from big tech firms including Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
However, questions are bubbling up about how long the spending will last without a killer AI application to justify the large infrastructure investments.
Still, the capital expenditures of the four largest Internet and software companies — Alphabet, Amazon.com Inc, Meta and Microsoft Corp — are set to climb to well over US$200 billion this year, a record sum for the group.
Executives from each company told investors recently that they would continue to spend large sums next year.
Separately, Hon Hai subsidiary ShunSin Technology Holdings Ltd (訊芯科技) is seeking a permit to invest US$80 million in northern Vietnam to produce integrated circuits, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a document from the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.
The proposed plant in Bac Giang Province would focus on producing and processing electronic components, specifically IC boards, the document said.
ShunSin plans to begin operations at full-scale in December 2026, with annual capacity of 4.5 million units, it said.
All products from the Vietnam ShunSin plant would be for export to the US, the EU and Japan, the document added.
Hon Hai already has major operations in Vietnam and has invested more than US$3.2 billion there since fist entering the Southeast Asian country in the 2000s. Most of its manufacturing plants are in the northern provinces of Bac Ninh and Bac Giang.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
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
RSS