3Q2012: HP and Dell to launch Windows 8 based tablets PC.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Some PC vendors, including Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell, reportedly plan to venture into the development of Microsoft's Windows 8-based tablet PCs with the new models likely to be launched in the third quarter of 2012, according to industry sources.

Amazon's launch of the low-priced Kindle Fire has not only triggered a price war among Android-based tablet PC vendors, but has also pushed the vendors to alternative platforms in order to avoid fierce competition, commented the sources.

Motorola Mobility began to market a low-priced version of its Xoom tablet through Best Buy on October 16, the sources indicated.

While Acer and Asustek Computer are expected to continue to roll out Android-based tablets, Dell and Lenovo reportedly will focus on business-use tablets, said the sources, noting that Dell's business tablets will run on Windows, while Lenovo's ThinkPad tablet models will run on Android OS.

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Chart: 3Q2011 PCs WorldWide shipments. Market share: HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, Asus.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.


IDC  market research company today announced that the Worldwide PC Market Grapples with Slow Growth in Second Quarter as Lenovo Rises to Number 2 Position, According to IDC.


The worldwide PCs market share  has HP leading with a 18,1%, Lenovo 13,7%, Dell 12%, Acer 10% and Asus 6,5%. Others 39,7%.


The study is focused on Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide PC Shipments, Third Quarter 2011 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands)
 

Press Release:



FRAMINGHAM, Mass., October 12, 2011 – Worldwide PC shipments increased by 3.6% in the third quarter of 2011 (3Q11) compared to the same quarter in 2010, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.


 The results are up slightly from the 2.7% growth experienced in 2Q11, and just below IDC's August projections for 4.5% growth in the quarter. The Americas and EMEA were slightly below expectations while the Asia/Pacific markets were slightly ahead. The market continues to struggle as consumer discretionary income is diverted to other areas and business spending remains depressed in light of other priorities and a potential double-dip recession.


"For the moment, PCs have taken a backseat to a range of other devices competing for shrinking consumer and business budgets," said Jay Chou, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.


 "While growth is expected to stay in mid-single digits in the fourth quarter, we should see faster growth in 2012 and beyond based on easier comparisons and refreshed PC offerings as the industry better addresses the evolving usage models by integrating more of the features in ultra mobile devices."


"Most vendors continue to struggle with the slow market environment and product changes," said Loren Loverde, IDC vice president of Worldwide Consumer Device Trackers. "Although we don't see media tablets and other devices replacing PCs, questions on how products will evolve, and consumer interest in these and other categories are providing a distraction. And while price remains critical, many users are delaying PC purchases for the moment. Still, there are opportunities, as demonstrated by Lenovo's gains, and we expect PCs to find stronger demand in the coming years."


"The U.S. market came in about flat as expected, but failed to generate positive momentum given the state of saturation and lack of incentives for consumers to upgrade. Other inhibitors included the poor economic environment and, to a certain extent, iPad cannibalization," said David Daoud, IDC's Personal Computing Research Director. "As we approach the holiday season, the opportunity for low single-digit growth is real, but mostly as a result of poor market conditions last year, as opposed to a recovery in demand."


Regional Outlook

• The United States market came in roughly flat with year ago shipments as the consumer and commercial demand remained constrained. Nevertheless, the market moved out of negative growth and HP registered strong growth going into the holiday season.

• Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) performed in line with forecast as the PC market continued to shrink in the third quarter across both desktop and portable form factors. The back-to-school season saw sustained weakness in consumer demand, with spending being diverted to media tablets and smartphones, while vendors and channel players remained focused on clearing consumer notebook inventory before taking new stock. Besides weak consumer trends, commercial demand has also slowed down, indicative of the increasing caution and postponed investments as a response to the current economic and financial turmoil in the Euro-zone and the U.S.

• Japan continued to see growth in low single-digits. Lenovo finalized its merger with NEC, leveraging its scale and becoming the clear market leader. Although power rationing affected some commercial purchases, the market by and large continued to see more adoption of both consumer and business PCs.

• Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) had a strong quarter with double-digit growth, meeting expected volume. The region managed to regain momentum, reversing two previous quarters of only single digit growth due to gains in China and India, as well as good volume in Indonesia and Thailand.

Vendor Outlook

• HP grew 5.3% year on year, thanks to double-digit growth in the U.S. The company has been criticized for management missteps in the past few months, and been affected by slower consumer demand in many regions, but managed to outpace overall market growth nonetheless.

• Dell continued to make gains in APeJ and CEMA, but declines in more mature regions pulled overall growth to –1.6% year on year. Dell faced tough competition and had sizable declines in some markets. However, its continued expansion efforts in China continued to pay dividends, maintaining double-digit growth in Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan).

• Lenovo experienced strong gains across all regions as it continues its channel expansion and capitalizes on disarray among the other top players. Lenovo has now outpaced the market by more than 10% for the past 9 quarters, and by 20% or more in six of these periods. The results moved Lenovo ahead of Dell in 3Q11 after trailing by a small margin in the second quarter. Lenovo's partnership with NEC and the acquisition of Medion added incremental volume and provided new access to the Japanese and Western European markets.

• Acer continued to struggle with inventory clearing and adjusting its strategy following declines in mini notebooks and its management shake-up. Total shipments were down 20.6% from a year ago – the fourth consecutive quarterly decline – but easier comparisons may help the company turn a corner in coming quarters.

• ASUS had a strong quarter, boosting growth to over 30%. Strong gains in Asia/Pacific, along with improvements in EMEA, helped ASUS overtake Toshiba for the number 5 spot in worldwide shipments. While the vendor has had some difficulties adjusting for the decline in mini notebook PCs, its mainstream notebooks have done well, especially in emerging markets.

• Apple Total shipments increased more than 20% in 3Q11, recovering from a dip to 15% growth in the second quarter but otherwise continuing a trend of more than 2 years with over 20% growth. The MacBook Air continues to boost volumes, and Apple's position in driving changes in consumer expectations for devices also positions it favorably relative to other players and tight consumer spending.

Source: IDC.

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Former Acer CEO Lanci joins Lenovo.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Gianfranco Lanci, former CEO and present of Taiwan-based vendor Acer, has joined China-based vendor Lenovo as an Italy-based consultant for strengthening Lenovo's presence and marketing in Europe particularly through integration of Medion AG, a Germany-based consumer electronics vendor acquired by Lenovo in July 2011, according to Lenovo.

According to industry sources in Taiwan, Lanci's joining Lenovo may have some negative impact on Acer. 

Because Lanci primarily established Acer's marketing executive teams and retail networks in the Europe market, there may be a personnel reshuffle and some of retail networks may shift to Lenovo, the sources said.

In response, Acer corporate vice president and president of Taiwan Operations Scott Lin indicated that Acer has lasted out the tough half-year following Lanci's leaving and has regained its strength. 

Acer has maintained stable marketing personnel and steady relations with retail partners as well as healthy inventory levels in the Europe market, Lin added. Lin emphasized that he is confident about Acer's operations in Europe without fear of any negative influence from Lanci.

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3Q11 : Touch panel market likely to grow. HP entering aggressively.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

The market for small- to medium-size panels continues to thrive while capacity utilization rates for large-size panel makers have been lower than expected. Riding on the wave of the tablet PC market, orders for small- to medium-size touch panels will continue to increase in the third quarter.

The market for tablet PCs have been growing rapidly as Apple's iPad series continues to increase in shipments, and other firms such as HP, Asustek, Acer and Amazon have all been entering the market aggressively. The competition has caused orders of small- to medium-size panels to increase.

According to industry sources, total shipments of LCD TVs in 2011 will only grow around 7-8%, around 200 million units. Large-size panel firms have been expanding capacity for the past few years, hence the low demand is likely to contribute to oversupply, panels firms are likely to face increasing losses. 

Industry sources added total shipments of LCD TVs in 2012 need to grow by 10% for panel firms to generate profits.

Many firms that produce touch related products such as sensors and modules have been shifting production lines to focus on touch panel customers. As the market for tablet PCs continue to grow, the touch panel makers can continue to enjoy outstanding performance.

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IHS iSuppli says: Samsung Chromebook carries US$332.12 BOM.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Besides serving as the first physical example of Google's new vision for computing that puts less emphasis on PC hardware in favor of the cloud, the Series 5 Chromebook from Samsung Electronics sports attributes commonly found in a full-featured notebook, according to a preliminary physical dissection of the product conducted by the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service.

Including a high-quality 12.1-inch display, a full day (8.5 hours) of battery life, a new dual-core Atom processor, 2GB of memory and a 16GB solid state drive, the new Chromebook carries a bill of materials (BOM) of US$322.12. When the US$12.20 manufacturing cost of the Samsung Chromebook is added in, the total cost to produce the device rises to US$334.32.

Priced at around US$500, the Chromebook very much resembles a value notebook or 3G netbook in terms of features and connectivity.

"The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is every bit a full-sized notebook PC," said Wayne Lam, senior analyst, competitive analysis, at IHS iSuppli. "Featuring Google's Chrome operating software, the Chromebook represents the search giant's first commercial implementation of its web-centric vision designed to entice users to move away from standalone computers to the network storage medium known as the cloud. But as much as Google would like to de-emphasize the role of user hardware, it is the hardware, in fact, that defines the Chromebook and will determine the success of the platform."

As part of its bold new take on mobile computing distinct from the smart phones and tablet space, Google has placed its formidable weight behind the Chromebook initiative in hopes of providing an always-connected user experience. The Chromebook is a mobile computing platform that boots up within eight seconds, connects effortlessly to the web via Wi-Fi or 3G, and stores all its data in the cloud.

All this should make the physical hardware less crucial and more disposable. However, the Chromebook's focus on providing a compelling user experience has resulted in the inclusion of some advanced hardware features not typically found in low-cost notebooks.

While emphasizing the Internet connectivity aspect of the Chromebook, Samsung chose to trim spending on certain items while increasing its outlay on other items, such as the display, battery pack and enclosure.

Key to this effort was Samsung's vertical integration, which allows it to source components like the memory, battery and display in-house. This enabled Samsung to reduce costs in some areas and also to differentiate the product from devices from competing manufacturers.

The motherboard is the most expensive subsystem of the Chromebook, at US$86.37, or 26% of the device's total BOM. The major cost driver for the motherboard is the main memory supplied by Samsung Semiconductor, consisting of a 2GB Double Data Rate 3 (DDR 3) SDRAM.

The motherboard also features a dual-core Atom N570 processor from Intel and a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for computing security from Infineon Technologies - a component seen more often in enterprise-level computers, but not so much on value computing devices.

The Samsung Chromebook features a high-quality 12.1-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) with improved light-emitting diode (LED) backlight technology that achieves 300nit brightness. Made in-house by Samsung, the display has a pixel format of 1280 by 800 pixels and a 16 by 10 aspect ratio. At US$58, the display is the second most expensive subsystem after the motherboard, accounting for 17.5% of the total BOM.

As part of enhancing the user experiencing, Samsung also chose to invest on an all-day, 6-prismatic cell battery pack, a component that takes up nearly two-thirds of the total volume of the Chromebook. The 7.4-volt lithium ion polymer battery is sourced from Samsung SDI and carries a cost of US$48.2, or 14.5% of the overall BOM.

Coming in fourth in terms of cost is the global 3G wireless wide area network (WWAN) module from Hon Hai Precision Technology of Taiwan, consisting of a quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM, a quad-band HSPA/UTMS and a dual-band CDMA. To keep its costs down, Samsung elected to use an older Gobi 2000 baseband platform from Qualcomm, the IHS iSuppli Teardown reveals. All told, the 3G WWAN module comes to a cost of US$42.85, or 12.9% of the total BOM.

At US$40.45 or 12.2% of the BOM, the other mechanicals and enclosures, including the keyboard assembly and touchpad assembly, take up another sizable share of cost, in line with Samsung's vision of making the tactile user experience of its Chromebook an enjoyable one.

The other costs in the BOM include:

A 16GB solid state disk (SSD) for storage, at US$28, or 8.4% of the total cost. Ironically, the drive was sourced from SanDisk and not from Samsung's own internal line of flash memory and SSDs. Most likely, Samsung did not have an SSD of equivalent capacity, and the company wanted to keep overall BOM costs low by supplying an acceptable, but not overly large, storage capacity.

The peripheral printed circuit board, which contains the Wi-Fi and PC camera modules, coming in at a cost of US$17.85, or 5.4% of the BOM.

The box contents, which include an AC power adapter and other accessories, costing US$10.40, or 3.1% of the total.

Slated for release on June 15, the 3G version of the Samsung Chromebook will be available at retail for US$499, with a Wi-Fi version costing US$70 less. Acer is the other company that will be making a Chromebook, and Google will offer the devices on a subscription model for the education and enterprise segments. In the US, Verizon will be a partner on the Chromebook initiative, offering free 100 megabytes of 3G service each month for two years.

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COMPUTEX 2011: Ultra-Thin Shuriken-panel notebooks make their debut.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Notebook models with Shuriken ultra-thin panel technology debuted at Computex 2011 with Taiwan-based Compal Electronics and Acer as well as some of Compal's downstream partners such as Anadem showcasing products at their booths.

The Shuriken panel, developed by Korea-based LG Display, allows a notebook with a 14.1-inch panel to have a chassis size comparable to that of a 13.1-inch model.

With Intel also aiming to reduce its future CPU's power consumption significantly from 35% to 15%, models with strong performance, but ultra-thin shapes will become the new trend for designs in the future. LG is already mass producing its Shuriken panels with Acer the first vendor to adopt such technology into its 14.1-inch product line. The notebooks began shipping from Compal earlier in May.

Acer's Shuriken-based TravelMate enterprise notebook has a significantly reduced panel frame from the typical size of 12mm to only 8mm. However, since panels with Shuriken technology have a higher cost than a standard notebook panel, if a standard notebook panel costs US$30, vendors will need to pay 50% extra to implement Shuriken technology.

Commenting on Shuriken, Compal president Ray Chen, at Computex 2011, pointed out that notebook designs will gradually turn to focus on adding value to the product and Compal had spent a long time on R&D related to shrinking the panel frame size. The advantages of the company's R&D will also help Compal to lead its ODM and EMS competitors in the future, Chen noted.

Currently, most ultra-thin notebook vendors such as Apple are trimming down their panel sizes by adopting open-cell assembly, whereby panel makers only complete the cell part of the LCD module and then ship the unfinished module to backlight unit (BLU) makers or downstream assembly service providers to finish the backend part of LCD module assembly.

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