Shipment Volume of the Greater China Notebook PC Industry Increased 5.2% Sequentially in 3Q 2013

Tuesday 14 January 2014, Amsterdam

According to the new market report, shipment volume of the Greater China notebook PC industry reached around 37.8 million units in 3Q 2013, up 5.2% sequentially while registering a smaller year-on-year decline of 11.3% against last year. The growth is mainly driven by branded vendors' deployment of Intel Haswell Core i3 and i5 products in regional markets, coupled with the advanced shipment by sea in order to reduce transportation costs and meet channel distributors' sales promotion in the fourth quarter.

Tender bids for educational notebook PCs in India also play a role. As the tenders closed in September, US bidders, who mainly outsourced to Taiwanese contract manufacturers, delivered notebook PCs in August and September, thereby pushing up the third-quarter shipment volume of the Greater China notebook PC industry.

Among all contract manufacturers, Quanta and Inventec saw stronger growth momentum in the third quarter - both witnessing a sequential growth of over 20%. This is mainly attributed to branded vendors' active deployment of new products and the pulling effect to maintain higher market share and advantages in the supply chain. Also, shipments for tender bids also bolstered Quanta's and Inventec's growth.

The industry's shipment value reached US$17.3 billion in the third quarter, up 4.5% sequentially and down 14.8% year-on-year. The industry's ASP (Average Selling Price) slipped to US$458, as a result of an increasing number of mid-range and value line models available in the third quarter. Besides, since the penetration rate of touch control notebook PCs was lower the expected, vendors turned to adopt low-cost touch control components, such as standard integrated touch control solutions or thin-film touch control modules, to reduce product prices.