Although top vendor Lenovo continued to reduce its notebook outsourcing to Taiwan makers in line with its policy of increasing in-house production, recovering demand in the market still boosted Taiwan ODM notebook shipments by 2.5% sequentially to 39.01 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new quarterly report published by Digitimes Research.

Competition from low-price tablets, Apple's new iPads and new smartphone models did not undermine demand for notebooks as much as originally feared, the new quarterly report on the notebook sector shows.

Quanta Computer remained as the biggest notebook maker in the fourth quarter by shipping 11.65 million units, followed by Compal Electronics (10.4 million units). Digitimes Research expects Quanta to retain the crown in first-quarter 2014.

Taiwan makers' shipments will decline over 11% sequentially in first-quarter 2014 mainly because of seasonal factors, such as fewer working days during the Lunar New Year holiday period, and inventory adjustments by vendors ahead of product transitions.