Taipei, July 2, 2009 (CENS)--With the consumer market recovering, HP, the world`s largest notebook PC brand now, has recently raised its notebook PC shipment projection by 12% to 38 million for this year from its earlier projection of 34 million, and will move to place more contract orders with its Taiwanese makers, including Quanta Computer Inc. and Inventec Corp., according to industry sources.

HP was comparatively silent in the global market for notebook PCs in the first half of this year, as the third-largest competitor, Acer Inc., has effectively captured consumer`s attention globally with a series of its newest products, including 10-inch Aspire One netbook PCs and the world`s first notebook PC based on Intel`s CULV (consumer ultra low voltage) platform.

However, HP has recently debuted a couple of new products, such as three mini 110 netbook PCs, 11.6-inch commercial notebook PC and CULV-based notebook PC, helping to build a full product line from the low end to the high, with Quanta supplying consumer models and Inventec manufacturing commercial and netbook models. Despite facing fierce challenges from Acer, which has already projected its annual shipment at 28-30 million units for this year, HP has stayed confident of keeping its leading position in the market by shipping a total of 38 million units for the year.

HP has decided to contract Quanta and Compal Electronics Inc. to assemble ultra-thin CULV-based notebook PCs, in an attempt to differ from Acer, which has had Wistron Corp. and Inventec as production arms for the product. Besides, HP has also cooperated with Flextronics International Ltd. of Singapore on production of AMD`s Yukon platform-based laptops.

Meanwhile, the brand has also newly added Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., the world`s largest EMS (electronics manufacturing service) provider, to its consumer notebook PC supplier list. Accordingly, Hon Hai will ship up to 2 million consumer notebook PCs, including models based on AMD`s platform, to the HP this year.


(by Steve Chuang)