The combined notebook shipments (not including detachable models) of the global top-5 brand vendors enjoyed on-month growth of 19% in September and were at a level similar to a year ago because of the distribution of new entry-level models. Vendors' inventory adjustments in August also contributed to the growth.
Among the top-5 vendors, Asustek saw 70% on-year growth and Lenovo recorded over 40% growth in September. Hewlett-Packard (HP) was the only vendor seeing an on-year decline. However, the top-3 notebook ODMs did not perform as well as the vendors and only achieved a shipment amount similar to that seen in August.
Although notebook demand has started recovering, the number of brand vendors that decided to reduce investments in the notebook market still increased. In September, both Toshiba and Samsung Electronics announced to quit from some parts of the notebook market.
Toshiba has quit from China, Russia, Africa and South Korea's notebook markets, while Samsung has quit from Europe's notebook market. These markets were where the two brand vendors were weakest and their absence is expected to benefit other competitors there.
Since Samsung also has given up its Chromebook business in Europe, Digitimes Research expects such a decision to cripple its attempt to expand its global Chromebook market share.
Microsoft has recently announced its Windows 10 will be available in the second half of 2015. The new operating system will occupy less storage space and can be adopted in smartphones and PCs.
Windows 8 users are eligible for free Windows 10 upgrade and the differences between Windows 10's and Windows 8's core designs are not as significant as those between Windows 8 and Windows 7. Therefore, Digitimes Research believes consumers' adoption of Windows 10 should come faster that for Windows 8.