LG outsources manufacturing

LG Electronics says it will stop producing desktop and notebook computers to instead outsource them, reports The Chosun IIbo.

The company says it will shut down laptop production at its plant in Kunshan, China. It has already relied on contract suppliers for some of its laptop sales, while all desktop computers are currently being outsourced.

LG says it plans to "focus on design, research and development of PCs while outsourcing production".

Consumers prefer the idea of a more costly but decent notebook over ultra low-cost netbook, says Softpedia

A survey was carried out in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, to determine people's preference between notebooks and netbooks respectively. Even with the heavy promotion of netbooks, the survey found notebooks have precedence by buyers.

“Despite netbooks flying off the shelves, which helped to increase PC volumes during the economic crisis in 2009, limited cannibalisation of regular notebook sales is expected across the region. Among the survey respondents, 60% indicated they would still purchase a regular notebook as their next PC,” says Reuben Tan, senior manager of Asia-Pacific personal systems research at IDC.

The Gartner group says consumers going mobile are buying low-priced notebooks to push personal computer shipments up 2.8% for 2009, according to The Journal of Commerce

The research firm's fourth-quarter forecast predicts worldwide PC shipments will total 298.9 million units this year, higher than Gartner originally forecast.

“Shipments in the third quarter of 2009 were much stronger than we expected, and that alone virtually guaranteed we would see positive growth this year,” says George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. Overall, worldwide shipments of PCs will be even stronger next year, with the recovery expected to rise 12.6% over 2009 to a projected 336.6 million units in 2010.