Notebook ODMs have announced revenues for January and all suffered over 20% on-month declines. The ODMs expect revenues to continue dropping in February due to fewer working hours, but will resume growth in March.

Quanta Computer's revenues were NT$60.07 billion (US$1.81 billion), down 38.3% on month and 14.3% on year, while Compal's revenues were NT$56.08 billion, down 32.6% on month and 18.4% on year, Wistron NT$41.21 billion, down 29.3% on month and 16.5% on year and Inventec NT$30.11 billion, down 21.9% on month, but up 0.78% on year.

Quanta and Compal's revenue drops were mainly due to notebook shipment declines. Quanta shipped 2.3 million notebooks in January, down from four million units in December 2015. Compal shipped two million units in the month, down from 3.7 million units a month ago. The two ODMs' shipments are expected to be even lower in February because of the effect of the Lunar New Year holidays.

Quanta pointed out that the first quarter is the traditional slow season for the notebook market and 2016 is no exception. However, the company's server business is rather stable. Consumer electronics product lines will also be impacted by seasonality.

Compal expects the first quarter to be the bottom of 2016 and will see growth each quarter afterward. Compal president Ray Chen expects overall notebook shipments to continue dropping in 2016 and will decrease by about 5% from 2015; however, Compal's shipments will stay flat from 2015, shipping around 40 million units.

Seeing the notebook market weakening, Compal will start strengthening its development of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) product lines.

Wistron shipped 1.1 million notebooks, 130,000 servers, 250,000 LCD TVs, 900,000 desktops and 500,000 LCD monitors in January, all dropping from December. For February, Wistron expects notebook shipments to stay flat or drop slightly, while other product lines will remain flat and all will see growth in March.

Inventec's shipment performance was similar to that of December 2015 in January. The ODM expects its revenues in the first quarter to drop 15% sequentially.