The worldwide top-5 notebook brands (excluding Apple) and top-3 ODMs saw their shipments went up from a month ago in May due to rising procurement orders from North America's education sector and the easing in passive component shortages.

The top-5 brands together enjoyed shipment increases of 32% on month and 8% on year in May, but Digitimes Research believes the growths were not fully contributed by consumer demand. Some of the increased orders were extra inventory that vendors took in as precaution for the component shortages.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) had an on-month shipment growth of over 50% in May and was the most aggressive vendor among the top-5. Lenovo returned to the second place after shifting its focus back to the PC business. Dell, despite having slipped to the third place, achieved an on-year growth stronger than all of its competitors in the top-5, by obtaining a large volume of procurement orders from North America's education sector.

The top-3 ODMs witnessed an on-month growth of 26% in their combined shipments in May. Quanta Computer had the highest on-month growth rate of the three thanks to increased orders from HP. It also helped Quanta return as the largest ODM worldwide.