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Joanne Chien, DIGITIMES Research, Taipei [Wednesday 3 October 2012]
Notebook shipments from both branded vendors and ODMs staged a rebound in September 2012 after a month of depressed sales in August when the notebook industry was busy clearing out Windows 7 models, according to Digitimes Research. Among the major brands, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Asustek Computer saw their shipments increase significantly in September, with HP's shipments for the month likely to mark the highest level for 2012. Inventec and Pegatron Technology led other ODMs with each posting an over 40% sequential growth in notebook shipments in September, said Digitimes Research. Despite improvements gained in September, most branded vendors will still see their overall third-quarter notebook shipments slide as compared to the previous quarter, with Asustek and Acer each suffering an over 10% on-quarter decline. Among the top-5 ODMs, Wistron and Pegatron will also post decreased shipments in the third quarter, while Quanta Computer and Inventec will manage to stay flat. Only Compal Electronics will beat the adverse trend with a sequential on-quarter growth of below 10%. Although Lenovo saw its notebook shipments hit the highest level for 2012 in September, the monthly gains will fail to improve its third-quarter shipment performance. However, Lenovo has continued to move toward its goal of capturing the top-vendor ranking in the PC industry by announcing a merger deal with Brazil-based CCE. Lenovo is likely to take up a 10% share of the notebook market in Central and South America in 2013. While Intel has continued to tout the hardware and software advancements for ultrabooks in terms design and multiple interfaces, and has also urged makers in the supply chain to fabricate thinner ultrabook models at the recently concluded IDF (Inter Developer Forum), the short-term development prospects of ultrabooks are not optimistic since Intel still has no plans to lower the price of its latest CPUs for 2013, Digitimes Research commented.
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