Quanta and Compal will be world's biggest notebook makers in 2011
Taiwanese vendors will ship more than 90% of the 200 million notebook PCs that the major vendors are expected to sell next year, according to the Taiwan-based DigiTimes.* Only South Korea's Samsung is expected to manufacture all its own portable computers, totalling about 12 million units -- see the table below.
Quanta is expected to retain its top spot in the OEM (original equipment manufacturing) business, shipping around 60m units. It's the main supplier for HP, the biggest PC company, and is expected to ship 23m HP laptops. It also makes the majority of Apple's laptops, which will add another 9m units.
Compal and Wistron will be the next largest manufacturers with 56m and 36m units respectively. Both companies are leading suppliers of Acer notebooks, and Acer is now the world's second largest PC company by units sold. In fact, Wistron was spun off from Acer when it got out of manufacturing.
Pegatron, a spin-off from Asus, will make about half of Asus's 20m OEM-made units.
Hon Hai, which trades as Foxconn, is growing aggressively by low-balling on prices. DigiTimes says:
Foxconn's advance into the notebook manufacturing industry is creating pressure for the first-tier notebook makers in terms of gross margins since Foxconn is competing for orders mainly using a low quote strategy. In response, the first-tier notebook makers are expected to speed up their vertical integration over upstream component supply to counter Foxconn, which is currently still their major notebook component supplier.
Quanta's gross margin is about 4%.
Foxconn makes most of Apple's iPhones, iPods and iPads, as well as most games consoles and huge numbers of mobile phones. The company has been criticised for its military-style security and a spate of suicides at its iPhone manufacturing plant.
Although PC manufacturing provides millions of jobs in China, it generates little in the way of profit. Foxconn International Holdings made a loss of $142.6 million in January-June, while in the same six months, Apple made profits of $6.3 billion. Apple currently has $51 billion in the bank.
* The DigiTimes link will stop working when the article is moved behind its paywall.
