Working from home boosts demand for laptops
Many firms have withdrawn earnings forecasts, anticipating a drop in consumer demand and economic slump, but performance at electronics retailers and chipmakers is hinting at benefits from the shift in work culture, Reuters reports.
Over the past month, governments and companies globally have been advising people to stay safe indoors. Over roughly the same period, South Korea - home of the world’s biggest memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics, on Monday reported a 20% jump in semiconductor exports.
Pointing to further demand, nearly one in three Americans have been ordered to stay home, while Italy - where deaths have hit 5,476 - has banned internal travel.
– With more people working and learning from home during the outbreak, there has been rising demand for internet services ... meaning data centers need bigger pipes to carry the traffic – said analyst Park Sung-soon at Cape Investment & Securities.
A South Korean trade ministry official told Reuters that cloud computing has boosted sales of server chips, “while an increase in telecommuting in the United States and China has also been a main driver of huge server demand.”
In Japan, laptop maker Dynabook reported brisk demand which it partly attributed to companies encouraging teleworking.
China is leading chip demand, analysts said, as cloud service providers such as Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings and Baidu quickly responded to the government’s effort to contain the virus.
– Cloud companies opened their platforms, allowing new and existing customers to use more resources for free to help maintain operations – said analyst Yih Khai Wong at Canalys.
China’s cloud infrastructure build-up has helped push up chip prices, with spot prices of DRAM chips rising more than 6% since February 20, showed data from price tracker DRAMeXchange.
UBS last week forecast average contract prices of DRAM chips to rise as much as 10% in the second quarter from the first, led by a more than 20% jump in server chips.
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