The global top-5 notebook brand vendors' combined shipments in April dropped 24% on month and 3% on year, while shipments of the top-3 ODMs dropped 15% on month and 9% on year, according to the latest figures from Digitimes Research. Most vendors replenished their inventories during March, and reduced their demand in April.
Among the top-5 brand vendors, only Asustek Computer achieved on-month growth in April. Acer and Dell both suffered around 15% on-month drops, while Hewlett-Packard's (HP) shipments declined over 40% in April after the completion of its education procurement orders.
Lenovo's shipments slid over 20% on month in April because the company had been pushing its shipments in March in order to meet the shipment goal for fiscal 2013 ended March 31, 2014.
Compal Electronics, Wistron and Inventec suffered large on-month drops in April, but these ODMs were also the ones who enjoyed strong shipment rebounds in March.
Despite the weakened shipment growth of tablets in the first quarter, notebook shipments still suffered a 6% on-year drop during the period. Since the second half of 2013, notebook shipments have mostly been contributed by demand from the enterprise market, entry-level education procurement orders (including the Chromebook) and demand for entry-level consumer models. Raising notebooks' added value only has a limited benefit over boosting demand, according to Digitimes Research.
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