Thursday, January 17, 2008, 11:00 am

Report: Quanta lands MacBook Air contract

By AppleInsider Staff

Taiwanese notebook manufacturer Quanta Computer has been awarded the contract to build Apple's new super-slim MacBook Air, a deal which will push the Mac maker's share of Quanta's yearly output beyond 20 percent, according to a published report.

Citing its usual industry sources, the increasingly reliable DigiTimes reports that Quanta aims to achieve an on-year notebook shipments growth of over 25 percent in 2008, with the key contributors to that goal expected to be Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

"Apple, which has just introduced its new MacBook Air, will outsource corresponding assembly orders to Quanta," the report states. "Total sales contribution from Apple is expected to surpass 20 percent this year on an estimated [combined] volume of 6-8 million units."

Quanta, which also manufacturers other members of Apple's MacBook notebook family, will reportedly emerge as the Cupertino-based company's premier notebook assembler in 2008 due to the spin-off at Asustek Computer, and the Mac maker's subsequent shift of orders to Quanta.

For its part, HP has indicated that it plans to order about 10 million notebooks from Quanta this year, which would account for about 20-30 percent of the system builder's output -- or about 30 percent more business than will be garnered from Apple.

Meanwhile, Dell's notebook orders with Quanta will contribute about 10-20 percent of the Taiwanese manufacturer's yearly sales in 2008, translating to notebook shipments of about 5-7 million units. The lower figure is a result of Dell shifting most of its mainstream notebook production to Compal Electronics, DigiTimes said.