原创 No Back-to-School Bump for PCs in China’s Export M

No Back-to-School Bump for PCs in China’s Export Market 

Meanwhile, notebook exports falter as a result of oversupply

The back-to-school season has come and gone, and for desktop PC OEMs in China’s export market, it was as if the playground bully took their lunch money, according to the market research firm iSuppli Corp.

China’s desktop PC exports in July declined by 12 percent, with 2.6 million units shipped, down from 3.0 million the month before and virtually the same as the number shipped in May. Not surprisingly, revenue from desktop PC exports in July also declined to $1.35 billion, down from $1.49 billion in June.

All signs point to overoptimism among OEMs regarding back-to-school demand as the reason for the decline. Continuing worries about the global economic situation is impacting consumers’ buying habits. Simply put, consumers are using older machines to do their work and forgoing any upgrades in the near term.

But this was not the only reason, as end-market sell-through was not as strong as OEMs expected in the third quarter. As a result, iSuppli expects that China’s desktop export shipments will continue to decline in August as well.

Notebooks Fall Too
Proving that it was not just a desktop PC phenomenon, notebook export shipments also declined, decreasing slightly to 16.3 million units in July, a 3 percent month-on-month decline. With inventory piling up, notebook OEMs began an inventory correction in June, but were unable to fend off the inevitable decline.

This impacted notebook OEM exporters across the board in China as No. 1 exporter Quanta and No. 2 exporter Compal both suffered major decreases in July.

The issue for these companies as well as other exporters of notebooks in China is that the end of the oversupply is nowhere in sight and, as a result, notebook exports continued to decline through September.