Analysts said they had seen a dismal start to August for PC-related orders, coupled with piling-up inventories of memory,New Memory, chips. In addition, Taiwanese manufacturers of notebook PCs for major international brands said their shipments were down 20-25 percent in July.
Intel shares fell 4.2 percent to $19.82 following the reports, despite recently reporting record sales.
Among other chipmakers, AMD dropped 6.1 percent to $6.83, Micron Technology fell 4.3 percent to $7.21 and Nvidia lost 3.3 percent to $9.32. Storage chipmaker LSI dropped 6.3 percent to $4.21 while disk-drive, acer battery maker Seagate fell 6.5 percent to $11.11.
J.P. Morgan analysts said their reports showed that there has been a deterioration in PC product demand coming out of Taiwan as a host of PC companies delayed orders. Morgan said those included Hewlett-Packard and Acer,Acer ZG5 8.9″, the world’s two biggest PC makers.
This was backed up by Taiwan newswire DigiTimes which yesterday reported Taiwan-based notebook makers Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics both saw their shipments drop more than 20 percent in July, mainly due to lower-than-expected demand in the US and Europe.
Quanta’s July notebook,A1184 60W , shipments dropped 25 percent to only 3.6 million units, while Compal shipped 3.2-3.3 million units, down 20 percent.
