Following stronger-than-anticipated shipments of notebook computers in the first quarter, research firm iSuppli has upgraded its 2007 PC shipments forecast to 264 million units in 2007, up 11.2% percent from 2006. The previous estimate was 10.7 percent growth for the year. Initially it was thought Intel's May introduction of its new Santa Rosa mobile chipset would cause buyers to hold off purchasing notebooks until later this year. However, according to the firm, Santa Rosa did not have a significant negative effect on first-quarter shipments.

“Notebook PC shipments rose to 21.8 million units in the first quarter of 2007, up 23 percent from 17.7 million in the first quarter of 2006,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, compute platforms, for iSuppli. “First-quarter notebook PC shipments were 3 percent higher than we had previously anticipated.”
According to the report, notebooks shipments will account for almost 40 percent of total 2007 PC market shipments.

iSuppli also is reissuing its forecast for Solid-State Drives (SSDs) in notebook PCs, predicting SSDs in notebooks will reach 12 percent penetration by the end of 2009, while Hybrid Hard Drives (HHD) in notebook PCs are expected to reach 35 percent in the same period.

“SSDs and HHDs have a clear performance advantage compared to traditional HDDs,” said Krishna Chander, iSuppli senior analyst, storage research. “Although in the near term, their cost will remain a prohibitive factor for mass-market adoption of SSDs and HHDs, this cost gap will narrow during the coming years, leading to their wider usage.”