Although the IT market has already started preparing for back-to-school demand, the global top-five notebook vendors' combined shipments and top-three ODMs' combined shipments only achieved 5-10% on-month growths in August, lower than those of the same month a year ago.

However, their combined shipments in September and October are expected to achieve strong growths because vendors are still optimistic about year-end holiday demand. Microsoft's Windows 8.1 with Bing solution for inexpensive notebooks will also be an important growth driver.

Among the top-five notebook brands, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer both achieved over 25% on-month growth in August. As for on-year performance, Acer achieved four consecutive months of growth, while Asustek Computer has been seeing its shipments stay at about the same level as a year ago.

The top-three ODMs' on-month shipment growths were between 4-8% in August.

In addition to US$249 notebooks, HP, Acer and Asustek also released US$199 notebooks using Windows 8.1 with Bing, looking to snatch demand with low prices.

Digitimes Research expects inexpensive notebook shipments to reach 5-6 million units in the second half, about the same level as Chromebook's 6-7 million units. With the addition of Intel's Classmate PCs, inexpensive notebook, which have characteristics and market positions very similar to netbooks, are expected to ship a total of 15 million units in 2014, accounting for 8-9% of global notebook shipments.