Due to fewer working days in February and persistently weak demand in the notebook market, the top-3 notebook ODMs saw their combined shipments for the month drop 18% sequentially and the global top-5 notebook brand vendors also suffered a combined shipment drop of 7%, according to findings by Digitimes Research.

Among major PC brand vendors, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek Computer suffered worse drops than the market average in February. Of the top-five notebook ODMS, Wistron, Pegatron Technology and Inventec (ranked number three to five respectively) saw poorer results than the others.

Google's Chromebook Pixels is an high-end addition to its Chromebook product line, but in the long run, the Chromebook platform may face pressure from its sister operating system, Android, as both Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Samsung Electronics are aggressively seeking cooperation from Google for Android-based notebooks, Digitimes Research believes.