Notebook sales to remain sluggish until Q1 2013

Sources from PC player also pointed out that Hewlett-Packard's (HP) significant losses from May-July are an indication that the strong demand for tablets and smartphones is gradually impacting that for PC products.

With several other notebook players including Acer and Dell also suffering weak performances during the traditional peak season in the third quarter, while Intel is expected to turn conservative about its shipment strategy for the fourth quarter, the sources are concerned that performance of the upstream supply chain will also be affected.