DigiTimes already spelling doom for Xiaomi and Huawei notebooks

The PC market has been experiencing a general decline over the past few years. The HP and Compaq merger, acquisition of Texas Instruments, Gateway, and Packard Bell by Acer, the acquisition of Medion by Lenovo, and the withdrawal of Sony from the market have all led to fewer manufacturers worldwide. There were even talks earlier this year about the merger of Vaio, Fujitsu, and Toshiba families of notebooks, but talk purportedly broke down quickly.

Thus, it was a bit of a surprise to learn that both Huawei and Xiaomi would be entering the ailing notebook market. These Chinese manufacturers have been successful in the smartphone business and launching new notebooks would come with a high risk. Now, sources close to DigiTimes are already painting an upsetting picture for the manufacturers' first notebook models.

Accordingly, the Huawei Matebook is a high-end product and subsequently carries a higher starting price. It is therefore less likely to achieve its optimistic goal of selling one million units by the end of this calendar year. Xiaomi expectations have dropped even lower from an initial 300k to 400k units to just 50k according to suppliers. Unlike Huawei, Xiaomi notebooks are mainstream offerings with mid-range prices, so it would be an even bigger blow to the company if it manages to sell fewer units than Huawei.

DigiTimes concludes that it would be difficult for these two smartphone manufacturers to repeat their respective success stories in the notebook market especially in the face of more mature and established manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, and HP.

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