Global PC shipments are declining, will the notebook business target increase fourfold this year?

Huawei's sprint to the notebook computer business has been successful. After its annual new MateBook series notebooks went on sale, it set a record of RMB 10 million in sales in 10 minutes on mainland e-commerce. It is reported that Huawei has set a goal of quadrupling the scale of NB this year, which means that the shipment volume will increase significantly, and the foundry manufacturers Pegatron (4938) and Quanta are expected to celebrate the same.

Economic Daily reported that after Huawei surpassed Apple in 2018 to become the world's second largest mobile phone brand, its mobile phone shipment target for this year is 250 million to 260 million units, and it is expected to surpass Samsung and become the world's leading smartphone brand. Huawei's mobile phone business has performed well, and its NB layout has also attracted much attention.

Analysts pointed out that Huawei's NB business benefited from the success of the high-end Matebook and the mid-to-low-end Magic Book. Its shipments this quarter are expected to surpass Samsung one step ahead of its mobile phone products, making it the world's seventh largest NB manufacturer. It is estimated that Huawei's NB shipments this year will be about 1 million to 2 million units.

Huawei's new laptops have recently been officially launched, including the MateBook X Pro 2019, MateBook 14 and MateBook E 2019. According to data released by JD.com, the official website of China's e-commerce company, MateBook 14, MateBook 13 and MateBook E 2019 achieved sales of over RMB 10 million within 1 minute, 8 minutes and 10 minutes of their launch, respectively, highlighting the popularity of Huawei's laptop products in China.

Wang Yinfeng, president of Huawei's consumer business PC tablet product line, recently said that Huawei PCs have been sold in 65 countries overseas in 2018, which has laid a solid foundation for the explosive growth of Huawei's PC business in the future. The new MateBook series will also be launched in Europe, the United States and other places.

Although global PC shipments have continued to decline in recent years, Huawei is still actively investing in NB products online. Huawei officially released the first generation of MateBook products in 2016. Wang Yinfeng said that Huawei hopes to establish an intelligent ecological chain, which will gradually be implemented on notebook computers with the help of the mobile phone ecological chain. In the future, there will be great progress in the entire intelligent PC. Huawei is expanding its ecological system through mobile phones and PC products, which is a strong challenge to Apple.

Huawei has set the tone for 2019 as a year of explosive growth in PC/NB business. Will it become a new rival of Taiwanese brands ASUS (2357) and Acer in NB products? In this regard, Pan Jianguang, a senior industry analyst at MIC, said that PC sales in the European and American markets are mainly controlled by distributors such as Amazon and Bestbuy. If new entrants such as Huawei and Xiaomi follow the channel method of mobile phones to sell PC products, it will be difficult to compete with the top six PC manufacturers. Therefore, it is estimated that the double A will not be affected in the European and American markets.

Pan Jianguang analyzed that although the global PC market has not seen growth, the market size is no longer declining, and the starting price of a NB is US$500 (approximately NT$15,400), which is still attractive.