NEWS

Notebook competition to grow fiercer in 2016

The notebook market is expected to see fiercer competition in 2016 than the previous years due to factors including Samsung Electronics having reorganized its notebook business to push new products for 2016; Xiaomi's entry into the notebook market; and vendors competing aggressively for the gaming notebook market and releasing products similar to Microsoft's Surface series 2-in-1s and Apple's MacBook Air, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

The sources pointed out that Dell and Apple were the only vendors who were able to see notebook shipment growths in 2015, while Asustek Computer's notebook shipments dropped below 20 million units because its entry-level T100 series saw fierce competition.

As demand visibility remains weak and the PC market has not yet showed signs of recovery, most brand vendors expect their first-quarter shipments to stay flat or grow only slightly on quarter.

Although both Intel and Microsoft have released their new CPU platform and operating system respectively, they are unlikely to trigger a PC replacement trend in 2016.

Source: Digitimes