ODM Inventec expects 2017 consolidated revenues to increase 10-15% on year, with growth mostly coming from servers and hand-held devices, according to company chairman Richard Lee.

Inventec currently has 55% of servers shipped from an assembly factory in Mexico, Lee said. The factory can assemble 35,000 servers a month and the capacity will be expanded by 20% in 2017. As US president- elect Donald Trump has vowed to boost manufacturing in the US, Inventec will consider relocating some server production from Mexico to the US, Lee noted.

However, assembly in the US will increase production cost for servers by 30%, Lee said.

Inventec Appliances, Inventec's subsidiary, expects to ship 58 million hand-held devices, mostly smartphones and feature phones, in 2016, growing 20.8% on year and aims to ship 68-70 million units in 2017.

Inventec began to set up a factory to produce PCs and hand-held devices in India in March 2015 and plans to start production in 2017.

Inventec and industrial computing solution provider Advantech in March 2016 established a joint venture, AIMobile, for producing wireless in-car tablets and industrial tablets or use in medical care and retail operations, with shipments to begin in fourth-quarter 2016. AIMobile aims at revenues of US$25-30 million and gross margin of 12% in 2017.