It's not exactly the green shoots of recovery but sales in February of motherboards made by Taiwanese firms are expected to equal or surpass that of January.
What Taiwan builds today, the rest of the world sells tomorrow. Or in this case, what Europe and Asia sells tomorrow - the units are expected to fly out the door to European and Asia system builders, rather than to their brash big-name US counterparts, the Commercial Times of Taiwan reports (by way of something called FT Global Archive).
Asustek, Taiwan's biggest mobo maker, reckons it will ship 1.2-1.3 million motherboards this month, 20 per cent up on Feb 2000.
Elitegroup forecasts it will ship 1m units this month - the Commercial Times does not supply equivalent figures for same time, last year.®