HP places strong notebook orders in May and June.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

First-tier notebook brand vendor Hewlett-Packard (HP) has recently notified its upstream component partners that its component shortage issues have already been resolved with its notebook orders in May and June both expected to reach its original targets at 4.1-4.15 million and five million units, respectively, according to sources from upstream component makers.

The sources pointed out that HP originally expects most of its new notebooks, set for launch at the end of the second quarter, will suffer from shortage as Japan's optical drive supply line is reported to have devastated by the earthquake; however, as the company's partners in Japan already have most of their production lines recovered, while the company had been aggressive stocking the related inventories in March and April, the company is already off from the component shortage crisis.

HP currently has a notebook inventory level of 4-5 weeks with its retail partners' order placements in May already achieving the company target. Although orders from Europe's retail channel are still weak, with orders from North America and Latin America retail channels remain stable, while orders from China's retail channel are seeing strong growth, HP's efficiency for placing orders to its upstream partners is better than expected, the sources noted.

As for notebook panels, due to retail channel vendors had recently placed extra orders, price of notebook panel for sizes such as 13.3-, 14- and 15.6-inch are remaining stable.

As for the upstream notebook makers, Quanta Computer is expected to see a sequential shipment growth of 10% to reach a volume of 14.4 million units in the second quarter, while Compal Electronics is expected to ship 11.5 million notebooks in the quarter, Wistron eight million units, Inventec four million units and Pegatron Technology also four million units.