Did anyone see this on DigiTimes?
The stock price of VIA rose nearly 7% to close at NT$27.15 on December 19 due to rumors that the company will partner with High Tech Computer (HTC) on development of a new UMPC. The price reached a three month peak.
HOW MUCH? 7%. To me that seems a huge effect. While I personally think that VIA are best positioned to dominate the x86-based ultra-mobile PC space due to possible partnerships with HTC, Dopod and Microsoft, I had no idea that people buying stock believe that same thing. Was the stock buying actually triggered by this statement perhaps?
The global market for UMPCs will reach 130 million units next year, Chen estimated.
130 Million? Is he joking? That is a number that just can not be reached through the current sales channels. Around 200-300 Million notebooks are sold each year so there’s no way that you’re going to be able to put UMPC’s on shelves and expect them to sell in those figures unless you bubble-pack them and sell them for 20 Dollars next to the chewing gum at the checkout desk.
Is he talking about a different channel I wonder? Where’s the biggest sales channel right now? A sales channel that shifts over a billion devices a year? That would be the cellphone sales channel. But even then it seems like a crazy figure. Symbian ships something like 100 million smartphones a year. Looking at a number of stats, it appears to me that HTC themselves ‘only’ ship around 10 Million smartphones per year so did someone get their maths wrong?
There is no way that figure is going to be reached. 1.30 million more like it. Remember that In-Stat reported that the market will reach 8 million units by 2011 and ASUS reports that the R2H, one of the most successful UMPCs had only sold 40000 units in 3 months.
Here’s my prediction for 2006, based on the stats I’ve seen (there isn’t many) and cross calculating from notebook sales figures and smartphone sales figures, I’d say we’re looking at global sales of around 500,000 UMPC units in 2006 using the correct sales channels ad maybe 1 million if they get into cellular carriers hands. VIA’s prediction is 130 times bigger than mine. Someone’s wrong but I’d rather put my money on my figure than Chen’s.
Steve.
December 20th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Hi Steve
In fact VIA’s stock price has raised 20% in last 3 days. Because Taiwan Stock has 7% limit every day.
And almost all medias reported that Asus will use VIA C7 to produce a new UMPC.
In my opinion, that will be the closest spec to your “Best UMPC spec”.
BRs,
December 20th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
I think Taiwan is one big family now!!!
A VIA-based ASUS R2H would be pretty damn good! Can’t wait.
Do you have any links to these stories?
Steve
December 20th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
The links are all in Chinese, but all mentioned this rumor. One is the most trusty because some engineers often discuss rumors in that forum.
VIA+HTC & VIA-based R2h are both trusty, so let’s wait and do some data mining on the internet.
Don’t worry Steve, you’ll be the first to know anything new ^^”