Despite worldwide PC demand having declined for five consecutive years, Samsung Electronics, Huawei and Xiaomi have returned to the notebook market because of milder competition compared to the smartphone market.

However, sources from the upstream supply chain pointed out that Xiaomi and Huawei, which were originally expected to achieve good shipments, did not perform as well as expected because demand remains weak for consumer notebooks. For its first year, Xiaomi shipped less than 500,000 units and Huawei 700,000 units.

At the same time, Asustek Computer has also not performed well and has begun a business reorganization, looking to regain its momentum. Asustek is expected to start seeing shipment growth in the second half of 2017.

Sources from the upstream supply chain noted that Xiaomi and Huawei originally hoped to quickly expand into the notebook market with their strong brand recognition, advantages in shipments, and familiarity to the China market, but have not achieved the results they wanted so far.

Huawei's first-generation Matebook 2-in-1s were manufactured by Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) and priced at US$699. So far, shipments worldwide are less than 700,000 units, lower than Huawei's original target of at least one million units. Most of the units were shipped to China.

Xiaomi's 12.5-inch and 13.3-inch Xiaomi Airs also performed weaker than expected, shipping less than 500,000 units, far weaker than the original shipment target of two million units. The notebooks are made by Wistron and Inventec.

Despite seeing weaker-than-expected shipments, Huawei and Xiaomi continue to release next-generation products, with Huawei announcing its second-generation 15.6-, 13- and 12-inch Matebooks recently priced from US$900-1,900. The devices will be available in 12 countries worldwide including China, the US, Germany and Japan, but the manufacturers have been switched to Pegatron and Quanta Computer, while order volumes are very small.

Xiaomi's orders for its new notebook products are also far lower than those for its first-generation models.

Since Lenovo is reportedly planning to start a business reorganization, company COO Gianfranco Lanci is rumored to leave the China-based vendor to join Huawei and help Huawei to expand into Europe and North America's notebook markets.