ALi Corporation (formerly Acer Laboratories) expressed optimism towards its second-half multimedia and peripheral chip businesses. The company predicts that its sales will hit bottom this month and start recovering in August. Overall business prospects for the multimedia chip market have turned brighter after Mediatek, the leading chip supplier, projected that optical disc drive shipments are expected to rebound in August with the now lowered inventory level. ALi president Chin Wu added that what Mediatek referred to was primarily PC-use CD-ROM drives. In the segment of DVD players, concern over possible stockpiles of inventory disappeared after the end of the second quarter.

Wu said that market may take some time to adjust operations between the better-than-expected demand in the second quarter and the traditionally weaker sales in the third, but according to the company, DVD player manufacturers do not have much inventory on hand at the moment. As a result, ALi predicts that its DVD player chip shipments will begin climbing in August and increase further, as strong demand usually appears from September to January.

Besides its DVD player servo chips, ALi expects to see better sales performance in its USB 2.0 chip shipments in the second half. ALi executive vice president Hsu Hsi-yuan said that with the rising popularity of USB 2.0-based PC peripherals, the company’s monthly shipments of USB 2.0 chips may reach 150,000 units on average in the third quarter and as much as 250,000-300,000 units in the fourth.

Currently, ALi’s portfolio includes the USB 2.0 IDE interface and scanner controller chips. Due to its earlier production start, ALi is Taiwan’s largest USB 2.0 chip supplier at the moment. Hsu said that the company plans to launch a USB 2.0 host link controller chip in the third quarter and a controller chip for card readers in the fourth quarter.