Although many notebook brand vendors have been aggressively investing resources into the development of notebook products that feature ultra-thin design (ultrabook) as well as support of Windows 8 and touchscreen, Digitimes Research senior analyst Joanne Chien pointed out that these vendors are still unlikely to be able to compete against Apple.
Apple's ultra-thin MacBook series products (MacBook Air) already account for 50% of global notebook shipments that feature an ultra-thin design in the second quarter and Apple's MacBook Air shipments in the fourth quarter are still expected to surpass the combined shipments of the non-Apple notebook brand vendors' ultrabook and ultra-like notebook products, Chien noted.
In June, Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard's (HP) weak shipments caused global top-six brand vendors to only achieve on-month growth of 2% combined; however, the top-three notebook ODMs, on the other hand, are expected to have achieve 21% on-month growth in June shipments after experiencing a weak April and May.
Although Microsoft released the US$14.99 Windows 8 upgrade plan on June 2 that was intended to boost notebook demand, the project did not achieve a result as good as the company originally expected.
Toshiba suffered more than a 15% on-month shipment drop in June, with HP also seeing its shipments drop 2% on month, while the rest of the global top-six brand vendors all achieved on-month growth between 5-10%, indicating that the retail channels' order placement has already started to recover from the previous cautious attitude, that is caused by Europe's economic turmoil and the vendors' inventory digestion in April and May.
The top-six brand vendors' notebook shipments in the second quarter is only expected to increase 1.3% sequentially, lower than the average performance of 6-8% in the previous years.
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