Shipment volume of the Greater China notebook PC industry reached around 42.58 million units in the third quarter of 2012, down 2.6% sequentially and representing the second lowest quarter in 2012. In the fourth quarter, traditionally the peak season in the United States and Europe, amid the global economic situation, the rollout of a slew of new low-price tablets enticed consumers to purchase the most talk-about tablets with price competitiveness instead of notebook PCs. The Greater China notebook PC industry's shipment volume arrived at 43.61 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, up 2.4% sequentially, which indicates that the seasonal effect is not longer manifest.u.

Looking ahead to 2013, MIC predicts that pull-in demand of new Windows 8 OS notebook PCs will fuel the industry's shipment, beginning in the first half of 2013. In addition, the shipment of notebook PCs based on Intel Haswell architecture is anticipated to kick off in the second half of 2013 and the new platform boasts to help the development of Ultrabooks in terms of performance and power efficiency. As a result, MIC predicts that the shipment volume of the Greater China notebook PC industry will hit around 179.59 million units in 2013, up 4.6% year-on-year.

Regarding netbook PCs, current players such as Asus, Samsung, and Toshiba are going to officially withdraw from the netbook PC market and eventually halt the shipment totally in 2013. The netbook PC industry's shipment volume will reach around 3.10 million units in the third quarter of 2012, down 28.2% sequentially.

As for the product development trends, constrained by the insufficient production capacity for touch-control panels and relatively high production cost associated with touch-control technology, it is expected that the shipment share of notebook PCs equipped with touch-control panels will still remain relatively slim. Nevertheless, as users are getting familiar with the interface of touch-control devices such as Smartphones and tablets, the touch-control trend will soon move to notebook PCs. In the future, although the touch-control technology is going to be widely used in notebook PCs, the penetration of touch control panels in notebook PCs will highly depend on the degree of price reduction in relation to the said panels.

More information can be found in the following MIC report:
The Greater China Notebook PC Industry, 4Q 2012

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Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends, focusing on markets and industries in Asia-Pacific. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english