Taiwan-based notebook makers' combined shipments in the second quarter of 2011 reached 44.49 million units with a sequential increase of 8.5%, better than 5.6% growth of the same quarter a year ago. The shipment growth in the second quarter of 2011 was mainly due to the over one million units of Intel Classmate PCs ordered by Venezuela, while demand from the consumer notebook market remained low and Intel's defective chipsets incident, which caused delays in shipments of new notebook models, did not significantly benefit the notebook makers, according to Digitimes Research senior analyst Joanne Chien.
Japan's earthquake was originally expected to create bottlenecks in upstream component supplies, but it turned out that the impact was very limited with most vendors already capable of resolving the related issues.
Acer, among the notebook brand vendors, had the worst shipment performance. Comparing with other notebook brands, which all achieved shipment growths, Acer's notebook shipments dropped 5% sequentially in the second quarter due to its inventory issues. Acer's order volume in Taiwan's total notebook shipments in the second quarter dropped to only 15% and without counting volumes from netbooks, Acer's ranking in terms of orders to Taiwan notebook makers, dropped to fourth with Lenovo rising to second.
In addition to Classmate PC with over one million units of shipments, Apple's close to one million units of MacBook Air shipments, a growth of 300,000 units from the first quarter, also helped Taiwan makers' shipments in the second quarter. Apple's MacBook Airs, in the second quarter, accounted for 30% of Apple's total notebook shipments.
However, whether Intel Classmate PC's shipment growth indicates that netbook still have a chance to see shipment growth in emerging markets, and MacBook Air's popularity will help pick up the pace of development of Intel's Ultrabook concept will still need to wait until 2012 for further proof.
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