Wistron will surpass Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) in 2011 and become the second-largest notebook supplier of Sony with 15-20% of the vendor's total orders, equivalent to about two million units, according to sources from notebook players.

Quanta Computer will remain Sony's largest supplier in 2011 with orders of over five million notebooks, about 50% of Sony's total 2011 shipments of 10-11 million units. Sony will have about 20% of the shipments built in-house, while Foxconn will receive about one million units, about the same volume as in 2010.

Sony originally outsourced its notebook production mainly to Quanta and Foxconn, but Wistron's OEM relationship with Sony on TVs helped the company also gain notebook orders from Sony in 2010. Wistron is mainly manufacturing ultra-thin notebooks for Sony in 2010, which offer only small volumes.

Wistron's major notebook clients in 2011 will still be Dell, Acer and Lenovo, with the three to contribute over 30 million units. As for Hewlett-Packard (HP), the company only landed about 1.5-2 million enterprise models for next year, meaning Sony will replace HP and become Wistron's fourth-largest client.