Wistron recruits senior Hon Hai official

Taipei, Jan. 23, 2003 (CENS)--Wistron Corp. of Taiwan recently recruited a former senior official of the Hon Hai Group to help it win contract production orders from Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP).

Wistron said that Liu Yang-huei, former president of Q-Run Technology Corp., an affiliate of the Hon Hai Group and one of the fastest growing desktop PC contract producers in the world, would join Wistron as president of the company's PC product division. Outgoing president Jian Yung-song will become the president of Wistron's game console and peripheral division.

In order to strengthen management of its six production bases worldwide, Wistron recruited a senior official from Arima Computer Corp., a leading notebook PC contract supplier, as its global plant manager last year. It also invited Chang Tsung-hwa, former president of Philips' cathode-ray tube (CRT) business group, to join its executive team.

Wistron said that Liu signed a three-year agreement with Hon Hai to manage the group's desktop PC contract production business with Compaq Computer of the U.S. and has established close ties with Compaq's management team. With Liu's help, Wistron has won contract production orders for some mini desktop PC models from HP, which merged with Compaq late last year.

In addition to Liu's efforts, industry sources said, Wistron adopted a low-price strategy to win the mini desktop PC order in a bid to develop more business with HP. Wistron used the same strategy few years ago to win orders for pocket PCs from Dell.

Wistron expects to ship about three million notebook PCs this year, up from about 2.3 million to 2.4 million units last year, based on new orders from IBM, Dell and Acer Inc. In addition, the Taiwan company will also greatly expand shipments of Xbox game consoles for Microsoft of the U.S. It is also scheduled to deliver about 300,000 Smart Phones, which Wistron developed in cooperation with Microsoft and Intel, this year.

Wistron posted revenue of NT$81 billion (US$2.35 billion at US$1:NT$34.5) last year and expects the figure to grow by about 30% this year to reach NT$105.3 billion (US$3.05 billion). The Wistron Group, one of the three sub-groups of the gigantic Pan-Acer Group, had revenue of about NT$110 billion (US$3.19 billion) last year and expects the figure to reach NT$145 billion (US$4.2 billion) this year. Wistron is poised to become one of the top-10 information/electronics conglomerates in Taiwan this year and seek a public listing in Taiwan in the third quarter this year.