Tag: Wistron

Apple iPhone deluge continues

Posted on March 26, 2015 by - News

novità-apple-2013It appears that Apple is set to release three more iPhones in the second half of this year.

Informed sources have leaked details of the models to Taiwanese wire Digitimes.

It reports that the phones will be the iPhone 6S, the iPhone 6S Plus and a four inch device currently codenamed the iPhone 6C.

Each of the phones will use Corning Gorilla Glass come with LTPS panels and while the 6S series will use Apple’s A9 chips, the 6C will use A8 microprocessors.  They’ll all be kitted out with NFC as well as fingerprint scanners.

Digitimes also reports that Taiwanese firms Wistron, Foxconn and Pegatron will manufacture the handsets.

Meanwhile the same wire reports that chip foundry TSMC will fabricate the chips for the 6S and 6C.

Notebook sales flat

Posted on January 16, 2015 by - News

notebooksSales of notebooks during the fourth quarter of 2014 amounted to 46 million units.
That’s according to Digitimes Research, which said in a report that shipments were flat compared to the same quarter in 2013.
Of the notebooks shipped, Taiwanese original design manufacturers (ODMs) shipped 36.6 million, representing nearly 80 percent of the total marketplace.
ODMs make notebooks which are then rebranded by multinationals or sold as so called “white boxes”.
The chief ODMs were Quanta with 33 percent, Compal with 31.4 percent, Wistron with 15.8 percent, Inventec with 7.5 percent and Pegatron with 6.9 percent.
Digitimes Research said HP was the number one vendor in the quarter with 23 percent market share, Lenovo second, Dell third, Asustek fourth, Acer fifth, Apple sixth, Toshiba seventh, Samsung eighth and Fujitsu ninth.

 

ODMs see notebook sales slump

Posted on February 12, 2014 by - News

Intel-logoIt continues to be bleak news on the X86 notebook front, with several original design manufacturers (ODMs) showing sales decreases last January.

According to Digitimes, Compal shipped 2.8 million units in January, down 37.8 percent sequentally.  Meanwhile, Quanta shipped 3.6 million notebooks, a fall of 10 percent.

Wistron, which has a broader reach in the PC market, saw 1.4 million notebook units go in January. Along with sales of desktops, handhelds,, monitors, servers and the rest, Wistron fel by 19.08 percent in the month, but a more severe drop of 26.28 percent year on year.

The only bright spark on the ODM notebook front was Pegatron, which showed a rise of 3.54 percent in the month, said Digitimes.

Tough times ahead for notebook ODMs

Posted on August 22, 2013 by - News

ancient-laptopSoft demand for notebook PCs and the relentless tablet juggernaut will continue to drag down shipments of Taiwanese ODMs in the current quarter and beyond, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The bank said the outlook for the second half of 2013 remains challenging.

Shipments are expected to grow at a rate of two to three percent, which is very bad news for Acer and Asus. According to analysts, both companies suffered a 40+ percent plunge in unit sales last quarter in the European market. BoA Merrill Lynch said Acer and Asus are suffering from the rise of cheap tablets. Ironically, Asus was one of the pioneers in the Android tablet space and it produces Google’s 7-inch Nexus tablets, but it appears that more and more people are simply turning to even cheaper, white-box tablets.

Analyst Robert Cheng wrote in a note that Acer is likely to see losses over the next four quarter. He did not have many kind words for Asus, either.

“Asustek looks relatively fine, but notebook guidance is quite weak,” he said. Cheng added that Asustek’s “product mix” will become worse in the second half of the year.

As for contract manufacturers, Compal and Wistron should stay flat in the third quarter, while Quanta and Inventec still expect growth. Pegatron will get the worst of it. It is expected to lose some share and client orders, hence its notebook shipments will drop by 5 to 10 percent this quarter.

All-in-one PC shipments to see strong growth

Posted on July 25, 2013 by - News, Products

dell-aioAlthough the PC industry has fallen on hard times, there are some notable exceptions and the market for all-in-one (AIO) PCs is one of them. Shipments of AIOs are expected to grow by 17.3 percent year-on-year.

All-in-ones are hardly a new concept, they have been around for years and Apple has already made a killing with the stylish and pricey iMac series.

However, in recent years PC vendors have also joined the market, with mixed results. Apple’s iMac still leads the way, but other brands should see 4.9 percent growth, according to Digitimes Research.

Although it is doing well in just about every other market segment, Lenovo is expected to experience a small drop in shipments. HP will see a bit of growth, but Dell and Sony should see strong gains. Interestingly, all big players are expected to increase their market share, which means they are pushing small vendors out of the market. This is not surprising, as AIOs tend to be quite a bit more difficult to design and produce than regular PC boxes, hence big brands with plenty of resources are at an advantage.

Quanta and Wistron should remain the leading manufacturers of AIOs, with shipments of seven and three million units respectively. Pegatorn and TPV Inventa should ship upwards of two million units each.

The numbers reveal that the market is still relatively small, but it seems to have a lot of potential. AIOs boast a number of advantages over regular PCs. Most of them use mobile chips and drives, which means they are a lot more efficient than traditional PCs. They also take up a lot less room and since they don’t have a bundle of dusty cables sticking out of them, they tend to look sleek and modern. Lower electric bills and less real estate taken up by ugly hardware are the most obvious selling point.

There are a few downsides though. Mobile components cost a bit more than the usual desktop bits and pieces, which means AIOs tend to have a lot higher bill of material. They are harder to service and  many components cannot be upgraded at all. However, the PC is already very mature so frequent upgrades are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Over the past decade millions of users migrated from desktops to notebooks, so they should be used to a lack of upgradeability by now.

Besides, vendors don’t mind planned obsolescence – they thrive on it. On the other hand, if AIOs really take off, they could have an impact on a number of component makers, ranging from AIBs to peddlers of various peripherals and monitors.

Notebook shipments hit new low

Posted on June 28, 2013 by - News

ancient-laptopContract manufacturers of notebooks had one of their worst quarters on record in Q1. According to IHS, they suffered a worse than expected quarter, with shipments to Apple and HP tumbling to the lowest level in three years.

Global shipments from ODMs in the first quarter totalled 33.2 million units, down 17 percent from 40.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2012.

The downturn was four to five percentage points than what IHS had originally forecast, prompting more concerns about the beleaguered industry. Taiwan based ODMs build notebooks for Apple, HP, Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Toshiba.

The knock on effect hit ODMs hard. Quanta got the worst of it, with a 27 percent plunge in shipments. It lost its spot as the world’s top ODM to Compal as a result. Furthermore, Quanta apparently received “conservative” orders from Acer, Asus, HP and Apple during the quarter. Compal saw a quarterly decline of 5 to 7 percent and it weathered the storm a bit better than other ODMs, thanks to stable shipments to Dell and Lenovo.

Wistron’s drop in shipments was 16 percent, but it still managed to rank third. Inventec saw a 9-percent drop and it ended in fourth spot, while Pegatron wasn’t as lucky. It saw its shipments plummet 21 percent, finishing the quarter in fifth spot.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, though. ODM shipments are expected to improve in the second half of the year. The key drivers of growth will be cheap ultrathin PCs with touchscreens, along with new models based on Intel Haswell parts. In addition, Microsoft will lower the licencee fee for Windows for notebooks with a screen size of up to 11.6 inches, as we reported from Computex a few weeks back. Better late than never.

Taiwanese server makers take on traditional OEMs

Posted on February 14, 2013 by - News, Opinions

server-racksThe server market has been dominated by the same players for years, but times are changing and Taiwanese outfits are aggressively entering the lucrative market.

Talking to EEtimes, Quanta cloud computing group general manager Mike Yang pointed out that Taiwanese companies are ramping up production of servers, switches and storage systems. The trend threatens to undermine the position of traditional OEMs.

“Traditional OEMs no longer have the advantage, we do,” said Yang. “The business model is changing and it provides us a very good opportunity.”

It could be said that Quanta entered the server market by accident. Five years ago it landed a sizeable contract from Facebook, which prompted the company to rethink its approach to the server market. Yang said the deal had a big impact on Quanta and it was quite surprising, as the company usually only provided precuts to OEMs.

But Facebook is not alone and Big Data is showing a lot of interest in Taiwan. Google and Microsoft also realised they could easily tap Taiwanese companies to build custom designed server suited for their needs. Two years after the Facebook deal, Korea Telecom also approached Quanta to build server racks.

“We asked them why they came to us, and they said they heard we were doing business with several of the biggest data centers in the world,” Yang said.

It did not take Quanta long to realise that it could cut out the middleman and sell its gear directly. Last year Quanta officially created its data centre group and it is pursuing the market more proactively. However, the company is playing both sides and it is still building servers for OEMs like  Dell and HP.

Quanta is not alone and one of its chief rivals is Wistron, a former arm of Acer that makes PCs for OEMs. Wistron is now getting orders for racks and last year it launched a spinoff called WiWynn to handle the data centre business and prevent possible conflicts of interest with OEM clients.