Brand vendors kick-off in-house notebook R&D for high-end models

Aaron Lee, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Monday 3 December 2012]

As notebook brand vendors have recently started up in-house R&D, sources from notebook ODMs expect such a strategy will only be applied for high-end models and should have a limited impact to the ODMs in the short term. For the long term, ODMs expect cooperation is unlikely to change since brand vendors will still need to consider costs.

Commenting on the new strategy, Acer chairman JT Wang explained that the company has no intentions of competing against its ODM partners, but will invest resources on advanced designs or new materials development to build unique brand-value, and securing component supplies.

However, for the brand vendors to re-build their R&D and manufacturing capability, the fastest method is to headhunt engineers from their ODM partners, and players including Acer, Lenovo and Samsung Electronics have already started offering attractive packages to lure engineers.