(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc.’s main suppliers in Taiwan suffered another double-digit sales decline in August as weak consumer demand dragged down the broader electronics industry.
Most read from Bloomberg
Total revenue among the island’s major collectors and producers fell 12.3% to NT$951.41 billion ($29.6 billion) from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That widened the decline from a 9 percent decline in July, marking the longest decline in sales of smartphones, laptops and other personal electronics since last year, when sales fell 7.5 percent on the year.
A surge in demand for artificial intelligence hardware that assembles data center servers and stocks rocketed to record highs this summer, according to Quanta Computer Inc. It has increased the wealth of existing companies. As a major partner of Nvidia Corp., Quanta appears to benefit from the US chipmaker’s runaway sales of AI accelerators, though those growing orders may take a while to translate into sales — Quanta’s cloud division expects AI server sales to double next year.
Read more: Nvidia partner expects AI server sales to double by 2024
The Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is the exclusive supplier of Nvidia’s AI chips and Apple’s bespoke silicon processors for iPhone, iPad and Mac computers. Performance is largely monitored as a measure of demand, although the company says it has a bottleneck in supplying Nvidia chips, which require more advanced packaging techniques.
Early signs around the start of Apple’s new iPhone generation suggest the device is as popular as ever, which could help boost sales for the Cupertino, California-based firm later this year.
Most read from Bloomberg Business Week
©2023 Bloomberg LP
