Wistron Achieves Highest-ever Sales in March

Taipei, April 14, 2008 (CENS)--Wistron Corporation, one of Taiwan's leading manufacturers of notebook computers, registered NT$34.268 billion (US$1.12 billion at US$1:NT$30.5) in sales in March, up 63.5% year-on-year and up 41.6% from the preceding month, hitting a historic monthly high.

The company saw cumulative sales reach NT$85.34 billion (US$2.79 billion) in sales in the first quarter of this year, up a whopping 65.39%. Still, the company won't see significant growth in sales in the second quarter of this year due to supply shortage in such raw material as battery.

An institutional investor predicted Wistron will be able to challenge 18 million units of NBs in shipment this year with major clients including Hewlett Packard Corp., Dell Computer Inc. and Acer Inc. In addition to the growth in NB shipment, Wistron is expected to see this year's shipments of handheld devices and LCD (liquid crystal display) TVs double that of last year.

Inventec Corp., another large-sized NB manufacturer, registered NT$21.8 billion (US$714.75 million) in March sales, up 17% from the preceding month's NT$20.75 billion (US$680.32 million) and representing a slight growth of 3% from a year earlier.

The company scored NT$66 billion (US$2.16 billion) in sales in the first quarter of this year and expects to see a 20% year-on-year growth in sales in the second quarter. The optimistic projection for the second quarter is based on the shipment growth in business-type and large-sized NBs.

Foreign institutional investors believe global shipment of NBs will grow 5% year-on-year in the second quarter of this year because of the strong demand from the emerging markets. Nevertheless, domestic industry insiders are somewhat less buoyant about achieving the growth in NB shipment in the second quarter due to shortage in supply of raw materials and the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

Despite the mixed projection on the NB industry outlook, one expects to see the NB sector to stand good chance to achieve double-digit growth in shipment in the second half of this year because NBs are increasingly replacing desktop PCs.