Combined sales of tablet and NB contributed to an 18.1 percent YoY increase in mobile PC shipments

TAIWAN: According to DRAMeXchange, a research department of Trendforce, the weak end-market demand and impacts from the Japan earthquake on NB supply chain are placing increasing uncertainty on the 2Q shipments by ODM manufacturers. Even though the demand will likely be deferred to 2H11, but it will also be compromised by the considerable surge of the tablet shipments.Source: DRAMeXchange, Taiwan.

It is expected that the crowding out effect will repress growth of NB. Therefore, DRAMeXchange estimates that in 2011, the shipments of NB, including netbook, will only be 208 million units with a mere 7.3 percent YoY increase; the shipments of netbook will plummet 25 percent from last year, with a total of 25 million units; the shipments of tablet will surge to 39.5 million with a 152.4 percent YoY increase.

As for the outlook of PC industry, due to the fact that tablet manufactures continue to launch new models and that the market share of emerging markets is on a gradual rise, the industrial ecology is bound to change in 2011.

Fig. 1 is a predication of the growth within PC industry in 2011. On account of the fact that desktop market is close to reaching saturation, the demand in emerging markets will contribute to the most part of growth in 2011. Currently, the average selling price of All-In-One computers is still significantly higher than that of traditional desktops. Hence, as far as the shipments of desktops are concerned, AIO computers will not be much of a help until 2012 or 2013.

In addition, affected by the cannibalization from notebook sales, the YoY increase of desktop sales is expected to be no more than 2.7 percent. However, notebook sales are not immune to cannibalization from netbook and are badly affected by the budget constraint. As a result, despite of the cannibalization on desktops, growth of notebook may not be as impressive as usual, which will be primarily underpinned by the demand in emerging markets and from business procurements.

In general, the cannibalization notebooks face from tablets is eminent. The total shipments of Mobile PC in 2010, including regular notebook, netbook and tablet, reached 209.6 million with a 31.2 percent YoY increase, which DRAMeXchange expects to advance to 247.5 million in 2011 with an 18.1 percent YoY increase, continuing to deliver the usual ~20 percent growth of notebook shipments and keep the growth momentum of PC industry going.Source: DRAMeXchange, Taiwan.