The world's top-5 notebook brand vendors saw their combined shipments (excluding detachable models) fall over 30% sequentially in January 2020, due to a combination of negative factors including the coronavirus impact and seasonality, according to Digitimes Research.
The fact that the Lunar New Year holidays were in January also reduced output from notebook ODMs during the first month of 2020.
Dell leapfrogged HP to the top of vendors rankings, thanks to better sales results from both the enterprise and consumer segments.
Lenovo's sales were buoyed by demand from its home maket in China ahead of Lunar New Year.
For Dell, changes to its product development and sales strategies affected its results negatively, Digitimes Research believes.
The top-3 ODMs also registered a 32% drop in shipments in Januart. But Inventec saw an increase in orders for consumer models from HP.
The coronavirus outbreak is expected hit hard ODM notebook production in the first quarter, according to Digitimes Research's latest quarterly notebook tracker report.
Top-5 notebook vendors' shipments, Januay 2019-Januay 2020 (k units)
Source: Digitimes Research, February 2020