HTC Pocket PC shipments to rise to two million units
David Tzeng, Taipei; Willie Teng, DigiTimes.com [Wednesday 27 February 2002]
High Tech Computer (HTC), the world’s largest contract manufacturer of PDAs, is expecting to ship two million Pocket PCs (PDAs running on Microsoft’s Pocket PC OS) in 2002, up about 30% from last year’s 1.49 million units.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), global Pocket PC shipments reached 2.897 million units in 2001, and the figure is expected to increase by 25% to 3.6 million units in 2002. The Taiwan-based company could account for about 55% of the world’s Pocket PC shipments this year.
Compaq Computer’s iPAQ Pocket PCs represented 80% of HTC’s 2001 shipments. However, as HTC’s client base increases and Compaq hands a portion of the iPAQ orders to LG Electronics of South Korea, the percentage will drop to 50-60% this year. HTC currently has an annual capacity of 2.5 million units.
Despite a shortage of LTPS (low-temperature poly-silicon) panels in 2002, HTC still shipped one million to 1.2 million units to Compaq, said company president H.T. Cho. LTPS supply should not be a problem this year, Cho added, since an increasing number of panel makers now have LTPS capability.
HTC will launch a wireless Pocket PC in April, and its smart phones will hit the market in the second half of the year, Cho said. Pocket PCs and wireless Pocket PCs will be the company’s main product lines this year, he pointed out, with a significant contribution from smart phones not expected until 2003.
On reports of HTC establishing facilities in China and entering own-brand operations, Cho said that the company has no plans to introduce own-brand PDAs, and migration to China will depend on China’s medium to high-end PDA market. At the moment, low-end PDAs are the mainstream products in China, and thus HTC is awaiting growth in other products, he said. |
