Following significant drops both on month and on year in January, worldwide notebook shipments remained weak in February, growing only 2% sequentially for the top-five brand vendors together and 1% sequentially for the top-three notebook ODMs, according to Digitimes Research.
Despite a significant shipment decline in January because of high inventory level, Hewlett-Packard (HP) still managed to reach its shipment goal for the fiscal first-quarter 2016 ended on January 31. HP then recorded strong growth in February and returned as the largest vendor worldwide, Digitimes Research's report noted.
Although Lenovo had strong shipment performance in January, its shipments in February were lower than those for Dell, who achieved growth in the month thanks to orders for Windows 10-based enterprise notebooks.
Asustek Computer and Acer both saw on-month shipment drops in February because of seasonal factors.
As for the top-3 ODMs, Compal Electronics achieved an on-month growth of 10% in February, the best performance among the three. Quanta Computer had an on-month decline in February with one of its major clients, Toshiba, gradually leaving the consumer notebook market, and another, Acer, performing weaker than expected. Wistron's February shipments were flat on month. The three ODMs together had an on-year decline of 12% in February, which was a big improvement compared to the January's on-year drop of 30%.
