Taiwan-based notebook makers saw significant increases in their shipments in the third quarter of 2016, as clients prepared for the year-end holiday shopping season. The fourth quarter will also mark the first time they have seen on-year shipment growth in four years.
Notebook brand vendors started replenishing their stocks in the second quarter after digesting their inventory in the previous quarter. The replenishment demand boosted their Taiwan-based ODM partners' shipments.
Taiwan's handset brand vendors and ODMs both saw sharp declines in their shipments in the first quarter of 2016. The brand vendors' shipments will improve in the second quarter due to launches of new models, but the ODM shipments will drop further.
The global notebook market continued to slump in the first quarter, with shipments going down. Vendors were less interested in boosting shipment volume than in improving their profitability by focusing more on midrange and high-end models.
Taiwan's handset ODMs all saw significant decreases in their shipments in the fourth quarter of 2015, as clients reduced orders. Its handset brand vendors saw better results, but the increases in their shipments were hardly enough to offset the ODMs' poor results.
Worldwide notebook shipments enjoyed a slight growth of 0.6% sequentially in the fourth quarter of 2015 thanks to stable demand from the year-end holidays in Europe and North America plus brand vendors have been pushing new Windows 10-based entry-level and mid-range notebooks.
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The launch of Windows 10 devices and the availability of Intel's Skylake-U processors shored up Taiwan makers' notebook shipments sequentially in the third quarter of 2015. But that cannot hide the fact that the notebook market in general continues to head towards a decline.
Asustek was the only Taiwan-based handset brand vendor that saw shipment growth in the thrid quarter of 2015. Its shipments already surpassed those from HTC, the once top Taiwan smartphone brand who is now struggling.
Taiwan's handset shipments registered growth in second-quarter 2015 thanks to impressive increases in shipments from Asustek and Acer. The strong showing of Asustek was in sharp contrast to the problems haunting HTC, whose global vendor rankings continued to slip.
The global notebook market remained sluggish in the second quarter of 2015. The seasonal pattern that has governed the notebook market previously will not appear in 2015, with Taiwan makers set to see on-year declines in the shipments during the second half of the year.
