Compal Electronics reportedly has received extra orders from Lenovo and Dell for 2011 and will become the two notebook vendors' largest ODM partner, according to sources from the upstream supply chain; however, Compal has declined to comment. Meanwhile, Toshiba is also said to have adjusted its outsourcing proportion for 2012 with Pegatron Technology and China-based EMS provider BYD to each receive a part of the adjusted volume.

The sources pointed out that Compal and Lenovo's joint-venture in China is an indication that Lenovo will gradually accumulate its orders to Compal and Compal will surpass Wistron to become Lenovo's largest ODM partner. As for Dell, in addition to the existing enterprise models, Dell will also outsource several consumer models to Compal, helping the company to also become the largest partner of Dell.

As for Quanta, which mainly supplies notebooks to Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Apple, the company has recently received orders for three notebook models from Acer, helping Quanta's overall shipments to further increase in 2012.

Although ODMs have all declined to comment about their clients, they have provided shipment forecasts for 2012. Quanta expects its shipments to see the same growth as that of the overall notebook industry and will focus on mainly profitability and not volume. Meanwhile, Compal and Wistron both expect to see more than 20% growth on year in 2012 shipments, and Inventec expects to hold level.

Quanta's notebook shipment will reach 57 million units in 2011 with Compal at 40-42 million, Wistron 30 million, and Inventec 17 million. As for 2012, Quanta's shipment volume will grow to 58-60 million units, Compal 48-50.4 million, Wistron 36 million and Inventec 17 million.