14 DAY TRIAL // Global notebook shipments will barely grow in 2013, and they haven't exactly been great this year either (2012), which doesn't mean anything good for the likes of Compal, Quanta and all other companies that manufacture the systems invented by HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.
Until a couple of years back, there wasn't much of a problem on this level. There were just so many laptop orders that no one was left out.
Of course, back then, there were still netbooks around, and they sold in droves which, by extension, meant many netbook orders.
Now, though, tablets are the rave, and full-fledged notebooks aren't exactly doing as well as they used to either.
That leads to the current situation: 2012 orders were weak throughout the year, and the ones for 2013 aren't much better.
The increase in laptop sales for 2013 is projected to be of barely 1%. The laptops expected to ship during the early parts of the first quarter have already been booked.
That means that ODMs (original device manufacturers) are already putting them together as per the plans and schematics received from Acer, HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.
Unfortunately, the ODMs themselves, Compal, Quanta, Wistron, etc., have been competing as hard as they could to secure orders.
Quanta managed to get 50% of HP's, while Compal got 70% of Dell's, 45% of Lenovo's (a very good deal, since Lenovo is the greatest PC supplier in the world now) and 27% of Acer's.
Wistron was left with part of the rest (30% of Lenovo, 30% of Acer, 25% of Dell), as was Inventec (HP's remaining enterprise notebooks).
All in all, at this time, there are just 5-8% of the order placement left. These are the sporadic orders reserved for models that will only launch in the second half of 2013.