14 DAY TRIAL // Lenovo will apparently be preparing some pretty big changes in the in-house notebook production department for 2014. According to sources familiar with the matter cited by DigiTimes, the PC maker is looking to outsource only 40% of its notebook orders during the next year.
That’s a significant drop from the 75% of 2013. Overall Lenovo is forecasted to ship around 28 million notebooks each in 2014.
This decision will greatly influence Taiwan ODM’s future, with the same sources indicating that their global notebook shipments will drop under 80%.
Lenovo has slowly started to move away from its Taiwan-based supply partners and has instead reached out to the Chinese competition due to the attractive costs offered.
Lenovo was the top notebook vendor in the first two quarters of 2013 with sales bigger than HP. It’s possible that the company may move on to become the largest vendor for the entire year.
From the 26.8 million notebooks Lenovo is estimated to sell in 2013, only 6.7 million units will be made in-house.