SAN JOSE -- Flextronics' chief executive clarified earlier reports pegging the EMS company's target revenue from notebook PCs at $3.5 billion by fiscal 2011.

Reports from Taiwan also indicated the company would ramp production to somewhere between 12 million and 20 million units per year, up from a current capacity of about 3.6 million.

Speaking to analysts on the company's quarterly conference call last night, CEO Mike McNamara said, "There was a lot of inconsistency with the reports coming out of the news agencies in Taiwan ... [The] $3.5 billion sales number may have included other pieces that didn't include notebooks. It could have been servers. It could have been other things. So there was a lot of inconsistency that came out of there and rather than address each individual one, I think it's fair to say that the way to think about this is, is kind of getting the data from myself, which is, we're going to hit about $1.5 billion to $2 billion."

McNamara confirmed reports that the company plans to hire up to 1,500 design engineers for its notebook division, and add operations capacity. "We will certainly put up a building, capable of doing substantially more notebooks than what we're doing today," he said, but declined to specify any production targets.

McNamara added that the firm is not currently targeting the fast-growing netbook market. "We have a few [netbook] designs that we're working on to begin the process, but we specifically stayed away from this product category. We specifically tried to focus on those product categories we had more experience and we have a limited design team." He did say the company would beef up its personnel in the netbook space and would likely add those products to its portfolio over time. 

Flextronics is the parent company of Multek, a top 20 PWB fabricator. It is unclear whether Multek stands to benefit directly from the parent company's foray into PC manufacturing.

SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA – Canadian Circuits, a PCB fabricator, has named David Hanauer sales person, covering the Northwestern United States. He will be the company’s first direct sales representative for the US.
 
Hanauer brings extensive sales experience, having worked most recently for Universal Manufacturing.