World's Largest Laptop PC Maker Raises Shipment Target

Quanta Computer, the world's largest contract laptop PC maker, on Tuesday raised its shipment target for this year to over 40 million laptop PCs, citing a clearer view of demand.

The Taiwanese company shipped 32 million notebooks last year, and in October forecast that shipments for 2008 would rise to around 36 million. The revision is a sign of strong demand worldwide. Quanta manufactures notebook PCs on behalf of nearly all major vendors, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

The shipment target does not include the emerging ultra-low cost laptop PC segment of the market. Quanta manufactures laptops for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (OLPC), and could win orders from other vendors now that the market for low-cost laptops is taking off.

"We don't know what demand for low-cost laptops will be so we can't really give you a figure," said C.C. Leung, vice chairman and president of Quanta, at a news conference in Kuei Shan, Taiwan.

He expects the popularity of OLPC's XO laptop and Asustek Computer's Eee PC to spur demand for the low-cost devices, but won't forecast by how much.

The company has factored in the shaky global economy to its 2008 laptop shipment forecast, Leung said. "It looks like there will be some impact on the notebook market in the U.S., but Europe and other areas are okay," he said.

Quanta's laptop PC shipments in the first three months of this year reached 8 million, down substantially from a record high of 9.4 million in the fourth quarter of last year. The company forecast that laptop shipments will grow 10 percent quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter.

Quanta reported consolidated revenue of NT$206.4 billion (US$6.78 billion) in the first quarter, up from adjusted consolidated revenue of NT$146.3 billion in the same period last year. Consolidated net profit rose slightly to NT$4.0 billion.

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