China-based Huawei and Xiaomi have entered the notebook market and Korea-based smartphone brand vendors Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are also releasing products for the market. Sources from the upstream supply chain have commented that these players are becoming strong competitors to existing notebook vendors and may even reshuffle the market in 2017.
The worldwide notebook market continues to see weakening demand, and many notebook brand vendors have cut new product launches to gradually phase out from the industry, but several smartphone brand vendors are still optimistic about the market.
Huawei launched high-end 2-in-1 devices at the end of May, while Xiaomi's inexpensive ultra-thin notebook will be released later in July. Strong marketing is expected to help these companies compete in the notebook market.
Samsung, which previously left Europe's notebook market and reduced its notebook operations, started expanding the business in the second half of 2015. Although Samsung's shipments are unlikely to return to the 12 million units a year scale in the short term, the company's strategy of targeting mainly mid-range and high-end sectors as well as some niche markets is expected to strongly boost the Korea-based vendor's performance.
LG, which also left the notebook market once, resumed its notebook operations and has outsourced orders to Pegatron Technology, targeting mainly the mid-range and high-end sectors.
Because of its previous partnerships with Taiwan notebook players including Micro-Star International (MSI), LG has some experience in design and also a basic customer base. These advantages are expected to help LG to acquire a good share in the mid-range to high-end sectors.
The sources pointed out that smartphone vendors crossing into the notebook market shows that the players are facing difficulties achieving further growth in the smartphone market and hope that the notebook market will be able to contribute some growth.
