Taiwan ODMs' combined notebook shipments are expected to drop 15% sequentially to reach 25 million units in the first quarter and the volume is unlikely to recover until their clients launch new notebooks in the second quarter, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report citing market watchers.

Notebook shipments in 2015 were seriously impacted by weak demand as well as some economic factors such as the depreciation of the euro and weakening emerging markets, the paper noted.

Currently, notebook ODMs only have order visibility of two months and are relying mainly on the non-notebook businesses to prop up their revenues, the paper said.

Quanta Computer shipped 43.3 million notebooks in 2015 and was the largest ODM. Compal Electronics shipped 39.4 million units, ranking second, while Wistron and Inventec were number three and four with 19.4 million and 18 million units, the paper added.