Global notebook shipments suffered a drop in the first quarter, down 14.1% sequentially and 13.7% on year, the sharpest decline in the notebook industry's history, showing the current weak status of the industry, according to Digitimes Research's latest notebook report

Digitimes Research believes that strong tablet demand is the driver behind the drop in first-quarter notebook shipments and emerging countries' notebook markets are also expected to have been impacted.

Although Lenovo successfully replaced Hewlett-Packard (HP) and became the largest notebook brand vendor worldwide in the first quarter, the China-based vendor's shipments in the quarter still suffered an on-year drop like its fellow competitors.

Among the top-10 brands, Samsung Electronics and Dell had relatively better performances, and Samsung was the only vendor to have achieved a shipment growth in both a sequential and on-year basis, surpassing Asustek Computer to become a top-5 vendor.

The market share gap between Samsung and Acer, also greatly shrank to within a single percentage point, making Samsung a big threat to both Acer and Asustek.

All Taiwan-based notebook ODMs except Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), suffered sequential shipment drops in the first quarter. Quanta Computer, Inventec and Pegatron Technology had the sharpest drops, while Compal Electronics became the largest notebook maker, surpassing Quanta, noted Digitimes Research.