First time over 200 mn units, NB shipment growth estimated at 30pc YoY

TAIWAN: DRAMeXchange has published the new research report on the notebook industry. According to DRAMeXchange, NB shipment will have higher chance to grow over 200 million units to 203 million units with 27.3 percent YoY. Netbook is expected to grow 27.8 percent to 36.3 million units while regular notebook will be adjusted up 27.2 percent to 167 million units. Notebook is regarded as the most potential products in IT industry.

According to DRAMeXchange, DT replacement effect has been accelerated while NB shipment will account 62.3 percent of total PC shipment. NB-OEMs will launch new diversified products in line with the new platform launch for Intel and AMD. New generation thin and light notebook, mainstream models and netbook will be scheduled for launch at 2Q10.

Besides, corporate IT spending will likely be de-frozen in 2H10 and will result in the boosting corporate models. Credit to the well-diversified product mix and capability in retail and corporate market, HP has strongly remained leadership in past three years.However, commercial models have been hampered due to the financial crisis and netbook turned to the strong momentum in consumer models. That is, OEMs who focus on more on consumer market show the most aggressive progress. Benefited from the Aspire-One netbook and CULV notebook, Acer has narrowed the gap between HP.

DRAMeXchange expects corporate demand will be triggered from the recovering economy, satisfactory Windows7 user experience, and improved software/hardware compatibility. Meanwhile, a four-year-replacement cycle has been postponed for long after 2004. That is, we have seen OEMS come up with several strategy toward commercial models.

OEMs, such as Acer and Asus, will also penetrate commercial market into large corporate deals and SMBs to comprehend product lines and regain the strong momentum in 2009. According to DRAMeXchange, OEMs who have superior and diversified consumer and commercial models will have higher competitive advantage to win the battle.

Regarding from NB-ODM side, the market share of the top four vendors has been attained in the level of 75 percent in the past. According to DRAMeXchange, market share from the top four vendors will likely be obtained to 80 percent or higher.Due to the product and cost concern, OEMS will trend to apply “order consolidation” strategy to raise the bargain power toward ODMs and component vendors.

Since HP and Acer will implement aggressive pricing strategy to grab the market share, they will demand more on product cost and quality as long as product launch speed. In order to achieve the goal, OEM will trend to release major orders to related ODMs to save operating costs. OEMs with higher in-house ratio and new players will also need ODMs to lower the cost and enhance product competitiveness.

According to DRAMeXchange's survey, the top four ODMs 2010 shipment growth will be estimated at 30 percent. Quanta and Comal, major ODMs for HP and Acer, tapped at first two places with over 35 percent YoY growth rate.

Shipments from Quanta and Compal apparently surpassed the volume from HP and Acer respectively due to the external environment issue. According to DRAMeXchange, the cooperation interaction between OEMs and ODMs will be different that ODMs bargain power toward component vendors will be enhanced. Also, upstream industry integration will be accelerated that cost control effect can be achieved by dedicate supply chain management.