The shipment proportion of notebooks supporting Vista operational system (OS) will soar in the second quarter since Microsoft has ruled that branded makers upgrade all of their consumer notebooks to the new OS by March or the company will suspend its marketing subsidy, according to industry sources.

With the strategy from Microsoft, Vista-supporting models will account for over half of consumer notebooks to be shipped in the second quarter, Taiwan-based PC branded makers said.

Although notebook shipments significantly picked up in January, as compared to the same period in 2006, while those in the first quarter will be strong, Vista-supporting models still account for a small proportion of the shipments, notebook OEMs said.

First-tier makers will surely cooperate with the strategy, but white-brand and business-use notebooks will not likely to aggressively adopt the OS, with branded notebooks to be shipped to Europe and the US in the second quarter to be the major parties that will support Vista OS, the sources added.

Since notebooks with 32-bit or single-core processors already support Vista Home Basic edition, it will not be difficult for notebook makers to cooperate with the strategy, sources said. In the fourth quarter of 2006, all notebooks shipped already are Vista capable while those shipped in 2006 have an average memory size of 700MB, which will be upgraded to 1GB in 2007, so that the models will definitely meet the 512MB requirement of Vista OS, the sources said.

First-tier notebook OEM makers including Quanta Computer and Compal Electronics recently said the actual effect of the Vista OS will surface in the second half of 2007.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved