In a survey on worldwide PC shipments, Counterpoint, a global research firm, predicted a loss of 11.1 percent YoY to 71.2 million units in Q2 2022, the worst YoY drop since Q2 2013. Lenovo continued to dominate the worldwide PC market in Q2 2022 with a 24.4 percent share. Recall that for Q2 2022, IDC stated a YoY fall of 15.3 percent.

The research company claims that lockdowns in Shanghai and Kunshan, which disrupted the supply chain for laptops and had an impact on significant laptop ODMs including Quanta, Compal, and Wistron, were mostly responsible for the decline. Important ODMs had YoY declines of 40% and 20% in April and May, respectively.

The manufacturing lines, according to Counterpoint, appear to have resumed regular operations and cleared order backlogs by mid-May. Additionally, a drop in demand and consumer spending has been attributed to regional wars and global inflation.

Q2, 2022 sales report:

Lenovo’s overall shipments decreased 12.7% year over year to 17.4 million units, mostly as a result of weak consumer demand, which was partly offset by modest commercial orders. HP was the worst hit among the leading brands in Q2 2022, with a YoY decline in shipments of 27%. Due to a product strategy that prioritizes business and premium customers, Dell’s YoY decline was only 5%.

Acer saw a 14.8 percent YoY shipment loss in Q2 2021 from a very high base, while Asus experienced a 7.7 percent YoY shipment decline as a result of its recent commercial market concentration. Apple’s Q2 shipments decreased by 20% year over year, mostly as a result of supply chain issues at Quanta’s Chinese manufacturing facilities.

As OEM stocks continue to build in the face of weak consumer demand, Counterpoint believes that these supply difficulties will be rectified in the second half of the year. Therefore, a little recovery could be expected, but the shipping reduction might persist.

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Apple supplier, Quanta, is apparently planning to resume production in a staggered manner for the MacBook Pro notebooks from its plant in Shanghai, China. Notably, the news arrives after the region saw a lockdown.

According to a DigiTimes report, sources close to the matter stated that the supplier of the Cupertino based giant is seeing higher order pull ins from its production site in Shanghai. In other words, the production of MacBook Pro models will likely rise in the near future, which should also imply that lead times for Apple customers will also be shorter. For those unaware, the delivery time of the new MacBook Pro models has been stretched following lockdowns in China in recent weeks.

As per known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Quanta is the sole supplier of the company’s MacBook Pros. Thus, the delivery times for the higher end laptops rose by around three to five weeks due to the lockdowns in China. Meanwhile, some MacBook Pro configurations are not even available for delivery until late June 2022 or possibly till early July 2022.

While the production of the MacBook Pros is slowly resuming again, supply issues are still expected to affect the product sales for the third quarter of this year. Just last week, Apple had also stated that lockdowns in China, rising price of raw materials, and even shortages of semiconductors have made it difficult for the company to keep up with the high market demand.

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Apple has just held its “Spring Loaded” event in which it unveiled its latest iPad Pro models along with a redesigned iMac, and the long rumored AirTags as well. Although, during the course of this event, one of the company’s primary MacBook supplier was suffering from a major ransomware attack worth 50 million US Dollars.

According to a Bloomberg report (Via MacRumors), the ransomware group, REvil, has publicly announced earlier this week that it had accessed the internal computers of the Cupertino based giant’s Quanta Computer Inc, which is based in Taiwan. In the attack, REvil managed to obtain 15 images/schematics of unreleased MacBook models. This includes “specific component serial numbers, sizes and capacities detailing the many working parts inside” of the MacBook, as per documents and blog posts found by Bloomberg.

Notably, Quanta Computers also works with other electronics brands like HP, Facebook, and more, but the ransomware attack was specifically targeted towards Apple. In the blog post, the group also demanded that the iPhone maker pay up an undisclosed ransom for the images/schematics they had obtained through the supplier by the date of May 1. Unfortunately, an Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

Although, Quanta Computer has since acknowledged the attack and has stated that the incident had no “material impact” on its operations as a whole. Furthermore, the supplier is also strengthening its cybersecurity infrastructure. But, REvil, in talks with Quanta during the negotiations, said that it had stolen and encrypted “all local network data,” which it would only give up once the large ransom sum is finally paid.

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With AR Core gaining popularity, Google’s focus seems to have shifted from VR to AR. According to fresh reports, Google is working on a standalone AR headset which may take on Microsoft’s Hololens.

Google’s standalone AR headset is internally referred to as Google A65 and will be powered by a custom-chip from Qualcomm. The chipset is said to be one of the new QSC series made by Qualcomm for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The exact chipset has not been confirmed since development is still at an early stage. However, there are two main ones in consideration at the moment.

There is the Qualcomm QSC603 which is a quad-core ARM SoC with two Kryo 300 Gold cores and two Kryo 300 Silver cores clocked at 1.6GHz and 1.7GHz respectively. Its GPU is the Adreno 615 and it has support for Tensorflow and Android Neural Networks API.

There is also the QSC605 which has eight cores in a 2+6 configuration. The two cores are Kryo 300 Gold cores clocked at 2.5GHz and there are six Kryo 300 Silver cores clocked at 1.7GHz.

Google is reported to be working together with Taiwanese manufacturer, Quanta, on the AR headset. For those who don’t know, Quanta made the Pixel C for Google. It is also making a headset for another company called Meta but which will be tethered to a PC. Above is a render of the Meta headset.

READ MORE: Rumor: Google To Launch Pixel Watch & 2nd Gen Pixel Buds This Year

The specific features and design of the headset are still unknown and there is no news on when it will be launched. We also do not know if it will be available to the general public right away or developers only like the Google Glass.

(Source)

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