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Samsung takes aim at Apple's notebook crown, projects 60 percent increase in laptop sales in 2011
Samsung has sought to take market share from all manner of iProducts over the years, and it seems the company is now shooting to steal Apple's MacBook thunder in 2011. Sammy sold ten million laptops in 2010 -- only 150,000 less than Jobs & Co. through the first nine months of the year -- and purportedly plans to move between sixteen and seventeen million portable machines in 2011. That is a massive increase in sales, but if the Korean company's 9 Series is an indication of what's to come, we can't say it's a completely unrealistic goal. Whether they move more product than Apple is still to be determined, but given its record Q4 earnings, there's no indication that the Cupertino crowd will be slowing down any time soon. Game on, fellas.
Quanta sets new record for laptop shipments in June
You may not realize it, but there's a good chance that the laptop you're using right now was made by Quanta -- the company is the largest laptop manufacturer in the world, and it looks like it's only getting bigger. According to PC World, the company (which counts HP, Dell and Sony among its clients) set a new record for laptop shipments in June, moving upwards of 4.8 million laptops for about $3.1 billion in revenue. It does expect shipments to "slow down a little bit" in July, however, but says things should rebound again in August. What's the cause for the uptick? Quanta says it's at least partly due to the easing of some component shortages, including those Arrandale processors that have been in short supply -- as PC World notes, Intel has said that it's been ramping up production in order to catch up with demand before the end of the second quarter.
HP increases lead over Acer in worldwide laptop shipments
Acer pulled closer to HP than ever in the third quarter of 2009, when it shipped 8.86 million laptops compared to HP's 9.91 million, but it looks like things swung well back in the other direction during the fourth quarter. According to DigiTimes, HP shipped a whopping 11.38 million laptops worldwide in Q4, while Acer moved 9.5 million units during the same time period -- an sizable increase in itself, but likely not enough to cause too much celebration at Acer HQ. As you might suspect, the holiday shopping season was largely responsible for the jump in sales from both companies, with strong sales in North America in particular said to be the main reason behind HP's widening lead.
Is Office Depot taking care of business by screwing over customers?
For better or worse, Circuit City has gone to that great big box in the sky, and, while we hate to see competition disappear in the retail world, we have a pretty good idea of which shop we might like to see go next. Office Depot has been the victim of various allegations lately, and Laptop Magazine has managed to get confirmation from numerous sales associates that those allegations about its staff are true, including lying about stock to prevent customers from buying machines without paying extra for extended warranties, and using Photoshop to raise laptop price tags by $100 so that those extended warranties are unavoidable. These and other shady dealings don't seem to be exactly supported by the company, as Office Depot issued an internal memo telling its sales force to cut it out, but with confirmations from around the country it sounds like this was standard operating procedure. Discouraging, really -- if we were looking for that kind of dishonesty we'd just buy all our gear on eBay. [Via Switched]
