According to MIC (Market Intelligence Center), an ICT industry research institute based in Taipei, the global desktop PC market and Taiwanese desktop PC makers' shipment are expected to have a strong performance in the fourth quarter of 2006, continuing the brisk sales of September. Due to the year-end peak procurement demand in the corporate segment and the holiday effect in the consumer segment, many desktop PC vendors are aggressively stocking up. Furthermore, in addition to a wave of price cuts by CPU suppliers in the second half of October, Intel will launch Quad-Core CPUs, and AMD will continue to augment the shipment share of AM2. Also, Microsoft will roll out the professional edition of Vista, and DRAM prices were adjusted in the second half of October. All these factors are expected to stimulate demand in the fourth quarter. Consequently, Taiwanese desktop PC shipment volume is expected to rise 11.6% year-on-year to 11.8 million units in the fourth quarter.

In the third quarter of 2006, due to the replacement effect by notebook PCs in July and August, plus price swings for key components such as CPU (Central Processing Unit) and DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), consumers adopted a wait-and-see attitude, affecting shipment of branded vendors in the global desktop PC market.

However, following several months of inventory clearances, inventory backlog in channels, caused by sluggish sales in the second quarter, gradually dropped to healthier levels. In addition, demand was significantly boosted by the back-to-school effect, which caused major international brands such as Acer and HP, and SI clients in the European market to place orders in September, boosting Taiwanese desktop PC shipment volume to 10.9 million units in the third quarter, up 22.3% sequentially and 10.4% year-on-year.

More information can be found in the following MIC report.  The Taiwanese Desktop PC Industry, 4Q 2006

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