Tender bids for educational notebook PCs in India also play a role. As the tenders closed in September, US bidders, who mainly outsourced to Taiwanese contract manufacturers, delivered notebook PCs in August and September, thereby pushing up the third-quarter shipment volume of the Greater China notebook PC industry.

Figure I: Greater China Notebook PC Shipment Volume, 4Q 2011 - 3Q 2014

Among all contract manufacturers, Quanta and Inventec saw stronger growth momentum in the third quarter - both witnessing a sequential growth of over 20%. This is mainly attributed to branded vendors` active deployment of new products and the pulling effect to maintain higher market share and advantages in the supply chain. Also, shipments for tender bids also bolstered Quanta`s and Inventec`s growth.

The industry`s shipment value reached US$17.3 billion in the third quarter, up 4.5% sequentially and down 14.8% year-on-year. The industry`s ASP (Average Selling Price) slipped to US$458, as a result of an increasing number of mid-range and value line models available in the third quarter. Besides, since the penetration rate of touch control notebook PCs was lower the expected, vendors turned to adopt low-cost touch control components, such as standard integrated touch control solutions or thin-film touch control modules, to reduce product prices.