According to Digitimes Research even the state of the Russian ruble conspired to stuff everything up for notebooks. On a yearly basis, February notebook shipments also showed a significant decline from a year earlier period.

The maker of expensive printer ink HP was the only one to buck the trend. It saw its notebook shipments grow nearly 30 per cent sequentially in February thanks to inventory adjustments implemented in the previous month and shipments of low-priced education models to India. HP also outperformed Lenovo to take the number one vendor ranking in the month.

However, Acer and Asustek Computer both suffered serious setbacks in shipments with sequential declines reaching as high as 40 per cent.

Compal Electronics and Wistron saw their shipments fall more than 20 per cent on month in February. Combined February shipments by Quanta Computer, Compal and Wistron were down 10 per cent from a year earlier, the first yearly drop in nine months.