Computex CEO and co-founder Sam Haffar has announced he is stepping down from his role after 33 years.
The move comes just five weeks after the Houston-based business was acquired by American Virtual Cloud Technologies (AVCT) and will also see Haffar resign from the company’s board of directors.
Haffar co-founded Computex alongside his brother back in 1987, building the firm up in the US. The business developed from a small system builder to a national name, developing its own recurring revenue cloud services and security and disaster recovery products.
Haffa said it had been a “great ride” and he was proud of what he had built at Computex. But it was time to take some time off and then focus on the next chapter of his life.
It’s no secret that things are bad in all facets of the PC market and Citi Research believes things are about to get even worse. In a note to investors sent late Friday, the outfit revised its previous forecasts downward. It originally expected the PC market to contract 4 percent this year, but now it expects a 10-percent slide.
The dire predictions indicate that Windows 8.1 and Haswell won’t have much of an effect on overall shipments. It cited sub-seasonal demand in the first quarter and a slowdown in notebook production as contributing factors. Citi also noted that the benefits from Haswell and Windows Blue will be muted and that PC-end demand will remain soft. Computex didn’t help and emerging market aren’t coming to the rescue, either.
“We do not see any meaningful catalysts near-term supported by our product and company meetings at Computex in Taiwan last week which revealed a focus on convertible & higher-end Ultrabooks running Haswell, which addresses the smaller premium notebook market,” Citi said. “We also believe investors will be disappointed when they learn that low-priced touch-capable notebooks (sub-$600) will not be available to consumers until 4Q13.”
Citi forecasts notebook shipments of 179 million units this year, down from 201 million in 2012. Desktops are down as well, 137 million units vs. 148 million units last year. Meanwhile tablet shipments are expected to hit 237 million units, up from 144 million in 2012, reports CNET.
It gets worse. Citi says it previously modelled +2 percent growth year-on-year in PC shipments in 2014 and 2015. That figure has gone out the window.
“We now expect cannibalization from tablets…to more than offset any ‘stabilization’ in demand resulting from stretched replacement cycles or more compelling notebooks,” Citi said.
Compelling seems to be the key word in the PC industry, nowadays. There are no compelling new products or form factors, no compelling OS upgrade or compelling new features. PCs are becoming so mature that they are starting to resemble household appliances, with no apparent need to upgrade until they die.
AMD is planning to introduce its next generation desktop Richland APUs tomorrow, to spice up what was a rather underwhelming showing at Computex. It has come up with a clever teaser video, in which it pits the new A10-6800K against Intel’s Core i5-3470, with and without dedicated Nvidia GT 630 graphics (spoiler alert: AMD’s new baby comes out on top).
However, although AMD has yet to introduce the new chips, most European retailers don’t seem to have gotten the memo. They are already selling them and they’re available from Scotland to Poland in dozens of shops. The prices are pretty good, too.
The range starts with the A4-4000, which is available for just £29. Of course, it’s not exactly a powerhouse, but it does have 1MB of cache, two cores clocked at 3.2GHz and Radeon HD 7480D integrated graphics with 128 shaders. The rest of the range is a bit more serious. The A6-6400K Black Edition is a dual-core clocked at 3.9GHz, with an unlocked multiplier. It’s going for £55, which isn’t bad at all.
Moving on to quad-cores, the A8-6500 is a 65W part clocked at 3.5GHz and priced at £92. It has 2x2MB of cache along with HD 8570D graphics, with 320 shaders clocked at 800MHz. The A8-6600K is a 3.8GHz quad core with the same HD 8570D graphics, clocked at 844MHz. It’s priced at £85.
The top of the range A10 parts aren’t too pricey. The A10-6700, a 3.7GHz quad core with 2x2MB of cache and a 65W TDP costs £115. It features HD 8670D graphics with 384 shaders, clocked at up to 844MHz. The A10-6800K Black Edition is a bit beefier. It’s a 100W part clocked at 4.1GHz, but it retains the same GPU, although it ships with an unlocked multiplier. Oddly enough, it costs a bit less than the 6700, and it is available, with prices starting as low as £109.
Adata has signed on the dotted line with distie Etna Technology.
Under the new agreement, which comes into effect as Computex takes place over in Taiwan, the pair will work together to push Adata’s memory products.
Jon Atherton, Commercial Vice President for Enta, said it was looking forward to working with Adata which was “a great brand with an exciting roadmap”.
Craig Connell, head of regional sales for ADATA, said Enta was “exactly the kind of distributor” the company had been looking for.
Asked about the most immediate benefits, Connell said the launch of Intel’s 4th Generation Core Processor family would see a strong surge in demand for very fast memory products, such as the new 2,800MHz DDR3 modules that the company had just launched.
He said Enta had a strong reputation among the kind of stores that would be selling Z87 boards and the company want to make sure that as many as possible came supplied with ADATA DDR3”.
According to analyst house iSuppli, ADATA became the world’s second largest supplier for DDR memory modules in 2010.
Manufacturers are hoping that a new crop of notebooks based on Intel’s Haswell processors and Windows 8 can help them buck negative trends in the PC market. A torrent of announcements is expected at Taipei’s Computex next month and the first designs are ready and shipping.
The first Haswell-based notebooks have already shipped and they are expected to arrive in retail channels by the end of the month, which means we shouldn’t see many paper launches at Computex.
However, most vendors are playing it safe and they don’t appear to be placing huge orders. With the PC market contracting by double digits, one can hardly blame them for such caution. As a result, ODMs are expected to see little growth in May, but if vendors regain their confidence they could place more substantial orders in June and beyond. Digitimesreports that Quanta, Compal and Wistron all saw their shipments decline by 10 to 20 percent in April.
Intel is trying to rekindle interest in notebooks by issuing new design guidelines and trying to keep prices down. This is especially true of Ultrabooks, which failed to catch on due to their relatively high prices.
Intel is hoping to shave off a couple of hundred dollars from Ultrabook manufacturer suggested retail prices by the end of the year. In addition to new Haswell chips, a growing number of vendors are choosing to integrate touchscreens in their next-gen Ultrabooks.
It’s not just Intel’s skin on the line, either.
Microsoft is already taking a lot of flak over lacklustre Windows 8 sales, Nvidia is hoping to grow its discrete GPU market share on Haswell notebooks, Seagate and Western Digital have both rolled out Ultrabook friendly 5mm hard drives and hybrid drives and the list goes on.
With so much at stake, plenty of big players have a vested interest in helping Intel’s Haswell push, which offers some hope of good news for consumers as it should translate into better value for money.
Computex CEO and co-founder Sam Haffar has announced he is stepping down from his role after 33 years.
