14 DAY TRIAL // Once again, the rumor mill has started turning and churning, and it seems that a recent report provided some general idea of what one may expect form the notebook market during the second quarter.
Quite a few things have happened recently that could affect how the mobile computer market progresses in the near term.
The most major occurrence was the discovery of the now famous flaw plaguing Intel's 6-Series Cougar point chipset.
Since this ended up in a mass recall of motherboards and notebooks from all companies involved, sales of many laptops were halted.
This means that shipments of mobile computers will not be very good in the ongoing first quarter of 2011.
The other major factor involved in the continued evolution of the laptop market is the continued rise of the tablet form factor.
With all the new models unleashed at MWC 2011, like the ASUS Slider and Acer Iconia Tab, it is expected that notebook sales will suffer.
Still, since so many shipments were delayed because of Intel's slip-up, orders will most likely be stronger than usual in the second quarter, especially considering that fixed 6-Seires chipsets will come out in April.
That said, a report published by Digitimes seems to imply that the rise in sales will be of 15-20%, at least according to upstream supply chain players.
Currently, Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is known to have received fewer orders than usual from HP (1.5-1.7 million), Apple and Sony.
That said, it might not manage to sell more than three million mobile computers in Q1, 2011, though it does hope to at least reach five million in the April-June period.
As for the top-five notebook makers, sequential shipment rate may decline by 4-6% in Q1, because of fewer working days in February (besides Intel's chipset issues of course).