As vendors are conservative about global PC demand and have launched more inexpensive models, they will select ODMs with the lowest quotes to maintain thin profitability in the second half of 2015. Consequently, Taiwan-based ODMs indicated that there will be heated price-cut competition and they will likely see losses on some orders.

Vendors, including Lenovo, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Asustek Computer, will soon send RFQs (requests for quotation) mainly for new models based on the Intel Skylake platform, the ODMs said.

If shipment volumes for Skylake PC orders are below a certain level, ODMs will surely suffer losses, the sources said. However, ODMs will have to offer low quotes to compete for orders because low utilization rates may result in larger losses, the sources indicated.