Taipei, May 13 (CNA) The worldwide laptop computer market is doing better than expected due to Microsoft’s decision to end its support of an older operating system and should grow in the second quarter, market advisory firm TrendForce Corp. said Tuesday.
Microsoft ended its support of the XP version of Windows on April 8, and its promise to subsidize XP users to switch to new computers has also boosted the market, the Taipei-based researcher said in a report.
TrendForce forecasted that worldwide shipments of laptops in the second quarter will increase 3.4 percent from the January-March period, and contract for the whole year at a much slower pace than in recent years.
To offset the market’s general decline, many personal computer makers will continue looking for new venues in which to expand as opportunities arise, TrendForce said.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan’s Acer Inc., for example, are already making noteworthy efforts to release Chrome-books meant for the commercial and education markets, touting their low cost and cloud-based features, the firm said.
Interest in these gadgets can create additional demand besides traditional customer segments, it added.
Notebook shipments worldwide are expected to decline by only 1-2 percent in 2014 and will return to positive growth of 2.8 percent in 2015 and 3.6 percent in 2016, TrendForce predicted.
In the mean time, Morgan Stanley maintained its estimate of a big drop in worldwide laptop shipments from major original design manufacturers (ODMs) in Taiwan during the second quarter after their shipments fell below expectations in March.
The U.S. brokerage predicted in April that the sales in the second quarter from the top five ODMs will drop 5 percent year-on-year to 32.3 million units.
Notebook shipments by the five companies totaled 11.3 million units in March, 2 percent less than the brokerage’s forecast.
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