Affected by the delayed launch of its DVD player single chips, ALi Corporation (formerly Acer Laboratories) is expected to achieve only 80-90% of its full-year revenue target this year, but it will have no problem attaining its pre-tax profit and EPS goals, company chairman Teddy Lu said at a recent investors conference.

The chip designer’s targets for pre-tax profits and EPS this year are NT$543 million and NT$3.45, respectively.

Despite the worse-than-expected revenue performance this year, ALi said that it is hopeful of seeing monthly sales jump to record highs in the first half of 2003, now with its optical drive chip product line being completed.

Lu said that ALi’s DVD player single chips entered small-scale volume production in October, and mass production of the company’s CD-RW drive single chips and CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive combo chips are also expected to begin in the next one or two months. Currently, all of these products are in the design-in stage at clients, Lu added.

With its optical drive chip business now showing stronger results, ALi is planning to take a more active approach for its core logic chipset operation in 2003, company president Chin Wu indicated. For Intel’s Pentium 4 platform, ALi’s supporting chipset, the M1681, is scheduled to enter official volume production in December. Its M1687 chipset for upcoming K8-core processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and its new M1563 south bridge chip have also finished sampling.

Though the company has decided to strengthen its attention on the chipset business, Wu stressed that ALi has no intention of engaging in a price war, common in the sector, and thus hurt its own profits.