Maker of Rugged Handheld PCs Expects Good Things

It appears that Unitech intends to leverage all of its resources, particularly its experience with the Windows CE operating system, in order to encourage sales of its handheld rugged computers.

The rugged handheld PC market is not an especially large part of the IT industry, but this doesn't mean it can't grow.

Until recently, clients that use such products had the contend with all the complications implied by the way manufacturers employed operating systems they themselves developed.

In other words, compatibility issues had been forcing the hand of downstream clients and not allowed them to actually seek other sources that easily.

Now, however, the Microsoft Windows CE operating system is gaining ground, delivering an actual OS standard without preventing smaller industrial PC makers from promoting their own inventions.

Unitech is one of the rugged handheld PC makers that expects to profit from the positive evolution of Windows CE.

Since it has been focusing on designing product with support for this software, it hopes to see its shipments growing by 20% each year.

This ambitious view might even be supported by the revenues scored during the second quarter of 2011, which are expected to amount to US$20.78 million (NT$599 million). This corresponds to a 27.9% sequential increase and will let the outfit boost its market share.

This is a stark contrast to the drop of 26.29% of the first quarter, when revenues only amounted to NT$468 million.

NT$468 million for the first quarter of 2011, down 26.29% sequentially with EPS reaching NT$0.23.

One of the factors behind these happenings is the way Unitech received orders from Japan's medical industry, among other things.

Meanwhile, European countries are also sending their own orders, another evidence for how Windows CE has been unifying the operating system standard on the Industrial PC market.

What remains is to see how all the segments of the industrial PC market, besides the handeld one, are going to evolve now that a so-called interconnecting element exists.