Wistron Said to Supply Smart TVs to Lenovo Exclusively

Taipei, Dec. 16, 2011 (CENS)--The Taiwan-based Wistron Corp., one of the world's large-sized electronic contract manufacturers, has reportedly landed Lenovo's contract order for smart TV devices, and will start supplying the product to customer on an exclusive basis in the first quarter of 2012 at the earliest, according to industry insiders.

Following the footsteps of Apple and Google, both of which have plans to launch their smart TV devices in 2012, Lenovo has announced its LeTV recently, indicating its entry into the emerging segment. Scheduled for launch in 2012, LeTV allows users to access, via ordinary LCD TVs, the Internet and online billing services, such as film and TV show streaming and digital content provision, regarded as part of the Chinese PC brand's enhanced business deployments in the cloud-computing segment.

Industry insiders pointed out that both Wistron and its Taiwanese counterpart, Compal Electronics Inc., received inquiries from Lenovo as candidate suppliers; eventually, Wistron outbid Compal in the race for the contract order, mainly because the former, whose LCD TV shipment is estimated to hit eight million units this year with Sony among its major clients, is better experienced in making such products than the latter. This, the insiders noted, will help to boost Wistron's presence in the competition landscape in the years to come.

Noteworthy is that Lenovo is said to have ordered only a small quantity of LeTV with Wistron initially, as the Chinese brand is just a newcomer tending to tap the global market for TV products although it has ranked among the world's top three PC suppliers by market share.

In addition to TV products, Wistron has also gained considerable growth momentum from PCs. Driven by increasing contract orders from such globally leading customers as Lenovo and HP, the company's overall laptop shipment is estimated to exceed 35 million units in 2012, for a 15-20% increase over 2011. Besides, the company has also garnered sizeable orders for tablet PCs from Dell, Lenovo and Acer, securing another growth engine for its business revenues in 2012. Hopefully, the company will ship four million tablet PCs in 2012, four times more than in 2011.

Moreover, the company has also allegedly landed a contract order from Google for data center servers following one from Facebook. Industry insiders involved in the contract manufacturing stated that Wistron is expected to finish 2011 with server shipment of 1.8 million units, which is likely to double in 2012.