May. 07, 2001

While news of sluggish mobile phone sale outlooks cause the handful of international famous brand companies to publish profit warnings, shut down own manufacturing plants and lay off thousands of staff, news about their placement of orders to OEMs or ODMs in Taiwan seems to indicate that shifting responsibilities in such situations is the order of the day. The incredible flexibility of Taiwan manufacturers to fill in seems to be always welcome in uncertain situations.

Compal Communication Inc. of Taiwan confirmed last week that they obtained an order for the manufacture of GPRS mobile phones from Motorola. They expect to obtain a five million GPRS mobile phone order from Motorola. Compal Communications, a subsidiary of notebook PC maker Compal Electronics Inc., is regarded as the Taiwan maker to have obtained the largest GPRS mobile phone orders to date.

Chen Jen-chung, president of Compal Communication, estimated that the Compal Group would deliver about three million mobile phones in 2001.

In related news, Arima Communications Corp., a subsidiary reinvested by Arima Computer Corp. another major notebook PC maker in Taiwan, also obtained mobile phone orders from Ericsson and expects to sell no less then 1 million units in 2001.