'Local heroes' swoop to bolster notebook sector
Notebook assembly partners are increasingly choosing to build locally, say vendors
The white-book channel has been hailed as one of the main driving forces behind a higher-than-anticipated surge in notebook shipments in the first quarter of 2007.
According to research house iSuppli, worldwide notebook shipments powered up 23 per cent year-on-year to 21.8 million in Q1, three per cent ahead of its previous forecast.
However, the evidence indicates it was the ‘local heroes’, and not the A-brand giants that saw the lion’s share of that growth following improvements in choice and availability of notebook components.
Ann Keefe, sales director UK and Ireland at memory vendor Kingston, told CRN that Q1 was the “best quarter in its history” for notebook memory sales in the UK, as shipments grew 40 per cent year-on-year.
However, she added that at 112 per cent, growth in shipments to white-book partners topped growth among A-brands.
“We’re seeing a lot more of our assembly partners building locally and Q2 looks to be going the same way,” she said.
Les Billing, managing director at Microtronica, claimed that the distributor’s laptop component shipments had “doubled each month” since the launch of the Verified by Intel (VBI) programme last July.
He said the initiative had enabled VARs to obtain a large array of chassis through distribution and assemble their own machines.
“More and more ODMs [Original Design Manufacturers] are coming into Intel’s programme with the launch of Santa Rosa [Intel’s new notebook platform],” he said.
“The local guys are growing much faster than the overall market because they didn’t have any significant share before,” he said.
Billing added that Microtronica now had “hundreds” of local notebook assemblers on its books and said VARs could make up to 20 points customising machines for markets such as SME and local government.