14 DAY TRIAL // Reports have come in about several facets of the laptop industry, and the one we are going to look at now has to do with original device manufacturers.
ODMs are companies that manufacture certain products only for them to be taken and sold under a brand by corporations like Acer, ASUS, HP, ADATA, etc.
Many of the world's key notebook producers have their operations centered in Taiwan. As such, Digitimes decided to check in on them.
What we are dealing with here is a somewhat less “official” information though, at least compared to whoever provided the data about ASUS and Pegatron's revenues.
Nevertheless, it should still be enough to form an opinion about where the laptop market is and where it might go from here.
Compal shipped 9.35 million models in the April-June period, 15% more than in the first quarter, and this is not counting tablets.
When slates are added to the numbers, the total becomes 9.5 million. Curiously, that is just a 10.46% advantage over the laptop+slate shipment figure of Q1.
Overall, the first half will end with 18,1 million Compal unit shipments, making it uncertain whether the company will attain its current target of 45.25 million (which is already lower than the 48 million predicted at the start of 2012).
A second supplier of notebooks is Quanta. Its shipments were of 13.9 million in Q2, 5% higher sequentially (it barely met the 5-10% growth prediction).
Finally, Wistron shipped 7.8 million (8.23% less than in the January-March period) and Inventec finished with 3.8 million (down 11.62% on quarter).
For the remaining half of the year, all bets are placed on Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system. There is no guarantee that IT players will get what they want most, though, not with dropping consumer interest in China and the continued European troubles.