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.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell both saw good performance in the fourth quarter of 2015 because of North America's year-end holiday and enterprise demand. Apple saw decreased shipments because its MacBook Air has already been available for over have a year and is seeing weakening demand, according to Digitimes Research's latest report about notebook.
Lenovo continued to snatch market share from Acer in Europe and North America in the fourth quarter of 2015, while Asustek surpassed Acer and Apple and became the fourth largest vendor worldwide in the quarter because of it aggressive push of new products.
As for ODMs, Pegatron Technology's notebook shipments also surpassed Inventec to rank the fourth largest in the fourth quarter of 2015 with a major growth in Asustek's orders.
Worldwide notebook shipments will suffer a sequential drop of 16.5% and an on-year drop of 9% in the first quarter of 2016 because of inventory from the fourth quarter of 2015, seasonal factors, weak Chromebook shipments and the Lunar New Year holidays, which will cause fewer working hours in the quarter.
The top-5 brand vendors will all suffer over 15% on-quarter shipment declines in the first quarter. Lenovo will be the one with the least decline thanks to the Lunar New Year holiday demand.
Among the top-5, HP will suffer the largest decline in the first quarter because of its high inventory from the previous quarter. Dell will see a smaller decline than HP because enterprise notebooks are not affected by seasonality as much.
Samsung Electronics will turn its focus from tablets to notebook and will be the only vendor with sequential shipment growth in the first quarter.
Quanta will see its shipments drop sharply in the first quarter due to decreasing orders from HP and Apple as well as orders for Chromebooks. Compal will surpass Quanta and become the largest ODM in the quarter.
This article is an excerpt from a Digitimes Research Quarterly Data Report (Taiwan notebooks – 4Q 2015). Visit our latest Data reports.
This article is an excerpt from a Digitimes Research Special Report (Taiwan notebooks – 4Q 2015). Visit our latest Special reports.