Lenovo to make more laptops in-house

DigiTimes picked up news that Lenovo is going to increase the number of laptops it produces in-house in 2014 and 2015. This year Lenovo's joint-venture with Compal Electronics will produce about 15 million laptops, representing 50 percent of the company's overall volume and next year the figure is expected to rise to 60 percent. The move is expected to have an impact on Taiwan's supply chain as Lenovo is building up a China-based supply chain.

The joint venture is now supplying both Lenovo and ThinkPad branded notebooks. Wistron is being hurt the most by Lenovo's move, as the maker was originally the ODM partner for Lenovo's ThinkPad notebooks. To minimize the impact, Wistron has turned its focus to non-notebook product lines such as server, handheld devices, recycling and sales services. The joint venture shipped 560,000 notebooks in 2012 and 6.4 million notebooks in 2013. For 2014, Shipments of Lenovo branded notebooks will reach 8.3 million units and ThinkPad 6.7 million.