Notebook brand vendors delay orders from July to late August

Aaron Lee, Joseph Tsai, 17 July 2012

Notebook brand vendors, seeing uncertainties in the US and Europe, have decided to postpone some of their July orders to late August in order to gain more time and flexibility to observe the market, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

However, related upstream supply chain players are concerned that the orders may turn to become rush orders since the vendors are also not sure about their exact shipment time and will request shipments only when demand appears, leaving a rather short lead time for the supply chain players, the sources noted.

Some component makers have reportedly been receiving short-term orders recently and the situation may only become worse as the proportion of short-term orders continues to increase through the end of the third quarter.

Since component makers have been seeing serious labor shortages in China, short-term orders from their downstream partners will become a strong challenge for the component makers as finding manpower in at short notice is becoming rather difficult.

As notebook brand vendors have delayed some of their July shipments to August, some notebook ODMs are expected to see notebook shipments drop in July, while the delay is also believed to have been partly influenced by the weaker-than-expected back-to-school demand in October, the sources noted.