Laptop demand expected to remain weak in 1H 2016

Sources in the Taiwanese laptop supply chain told DigiTimes that global notebook demand is expected to remain weak in the first half of 2016. Making long-term predictions is always a bit risky, but the sources believe the market may rebound in the second half of the year. The site also mentions that laptop vendors are turning to short-term orders, which poses risk to inventory management:

Apple is expected to see on-year growth in 2016 notebook shipments, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, and Lenovo will see flat shipments and Acer and Asustek Computer may see declines.

Quanta Computer shipped four million notebooks in December 2015, up 200,000 units from November, while Compal shipped 3.7 million units in the month and Inventec shipped 1.85 million PCs including notebooks, all-in-one PCs and thin clients.

The sources pointed out that notebook brand vendors are conservative about their operations in the first half and are turning to place short-term orders, but such a strategy could pose risks to ODMs and will challenge ODMs' inventory management.