14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that laptop suppliers are not as enthusiastic and optimistic about their expected sales as they were early last year, and HP, the world's top PC maker, is said to be expecting flat shipments in the January-March 2011 period.
Last year started off with most, if not all, PC makers being quite eager to see their laptop, especially netbook, sales keep growing.
Then, things changed when tablets emerged, and with slates already being said to be stealing netbook market share, suppliers aren't as optimistic as before.
There is also the fact that the first quarter of any year is known to be slower, since consumers are 'recovering' from the spending sprees around the holiday season.
Regardless, a recent Digitimes report deals with HP's expectations, and it seems that the outfit expects nothing special from these three months.
HP was initially the second largest notebook supplier in China, but some disputes regarding the product quality led to its ranking dropping sharply to number 4 in 2010.
As opposed to this, Acer formed a cooperation with Founder (a company base din Chine) and may replace HP as number 4, pushing HP to rank 5.
Basically, HP's Asia Pacific market share is expected to drop by 15-20%, even as sales in the Latin American market are projected to jump by 35-45%.
Thus, instead of having a sales growth forecast of 28% like in Q1 2010, HP has set an increase of 7-10% on year.
In other words, its target global notebook shipments are of 10.1-10.4 million, at least according to upstream component makers cited by Digitimes.
The issues in China may have a visible effect on HP's tactics. Since China is expected to become the largest PC market by 2012, surpassing even the US, the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays are a major focus.
What remains to be seen is how (and if) HP manages to salvage its image in this area.