Hewlett-Packard (HP) is expected to have shipped seven million notebooks in the first quarter, one million units more than expected and will have a chance to return as the largest notebook vendor worldwide, surpassing Lenovo, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

　　However, Acer and Asustek Computer's shipments are expected to be impacted.

　　The sources originally expected HP to only ship six million notebooks in the first quarter, lower than Lenovo's 6.6 million units, but HP performed better than their expectation. The source also expects HP's shipments in 2014 to have a chance breaking their original estimates of 28 million units. Lenovo is expected to ship 28.3 million notebooks in 2014.

　　HP's consumer notebooks are mainly outsourced to Quanta Computer, which currently supplies over 50% of HP's total notebook shipments. In addition to Quanta, Wistron and Compal Electronics are also ODMs of HP's consumer notebooks. Inventec is the main ODM of HP's enterprise notebooks and the company also manufactures some consumer models. The increased shipments will benefit Quanta and Inventec the most.

　　HP shipped 7.7 million notebooks in the fourth quarter of 2013 and is expected to see a shipment drop of only 9% on quarter in the first quarter.

　　As for Acer, the sources pointed out that Acer is estimated to have suffered a 15% sequential drop in the first quarter.