Contract Notebook Maker Reports Record Sales, Shipments In June

Quanta Computer, the world’s largest builder of notebook PCs for the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony, said Thursday that it had shipped a record 4.8 million laptops in June, according to media reports.

Quanta had sales of $3.12 billion in June. The Taiwanese manufacturer’s previous monthly sales record was in April of this year, when Quanta shipped a then-record 4.5 million notebooks and hauled in $3.0 billion in revenue.

The big month pushed Quanta’s consolidated revenue up 8.3 percent over May and up 54 percent as compared to June 2009. The company reported that it had shipped 13.7 million units in the second quarter as a whole. A sign that the PC industry is solidly on the upswing and emerging from recessionary uncertainty? Quanta is certainly optimistic that this is the case, forecasting an even bigger third quarter than its record second quarter.

Quanta actually expects its shipments and sales to slow a bit this month as compared to June before spiking again in August as back-to-school buying picks up in the U.S. and elsewhere. The company gave guidance that its notebook shipments would grow between 10 to 20 percent sequentially in the third quarter, according to reports.

The company said it expects total notebook shipments for 2010 to increase 40 percent from 2009, translating to 50 million units shipped for the year.

Quanta also indicated in its Thursday comments that shortages of Intel’s Arrandale-class notebook chips had eased, according to reports. Intel’s Arrandale processors for thin-and-light laptops, notably Core i3 and Core i5 chips featuring integrated 45-nanometer GPUs in the same package as 32nm CPUs, had reportedly been in short supply in the second quarter of 2010.

Meanwhile, Quanta this week entered a partnership with Chungwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest telecommunications company, ’to collaborate on cloud computing efforts.’