With Acer rumored to be planning to outsource its tablet OEM orders to China-based makers, Asustek Computer has reportedly also been seeking partnerships with China component makers to strengthen its competitiveness in the mobile device market, according to sources from the upstream supply chain. The sources are concerned that the trend could seriously impact their performance in 2014.
Asustek reportedly is looking to form a cooperation with China-based makers of components such as panel, touchscreen module, processor platform and battery, as well as assembly service providers.
Since China-based supply chain players already achieved significant improvements in both product design and quality, many vendors have started turning to place their orders with these players.
China-based electronics manufacturing service (EMS) provider BYD is one of the players that has been aggressively striving for orders. In addition to smartphone orders from Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Huawei, BlackBerry and High-Tech Computer (HTC), the company has recently landed orders for Intel’s education tablets, Acer’s entry-level smartphone and Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) tablets.
Intel has also turned to promote China suppliers for component purchasing and has relatively improved these suppliers ability to land orders.
Shuttle’s ex-president David Chen has also recently founded a new company and with supports from Intel and MediaTek, the company is looking to land assembly orders for mobile devices in the future.
