The Lenovo-NEC PC joint venture is unlikely to affect current order status at the two companies' PC contract makers in Taiwan, with Micro-Star International (MSI) in particular having recently landed PC orders from NEC, according to sources from component makers.

Although some market watchers believe NEC's outsourcing plans will be affected by its cooperation with Lenovo, the sources pointed out that since NEC has picked a partner that will take some time before the two have a better consensus, NEC's OEM partners are unlikely to be affected in the short term; meanwhile, since Lenovo and NEC both outsource their PC orders to the same partners such as Wistron, Compal and Micro-Star International (MSI), orders are unlikely to be shifted around significantly.

In addition, Lenovo's aggressive action of outsourcing its orders to Taiwan makers may lead NEC to expand its outsourcing to Taiwan the sources added.

However, since NEC has already been excluded from the top-10 brands in the global notebook market, Lenovo will still have difficulty challenging the top-three brands in terms of notebook shipments.

The sources cited IDC figures and pointed out that both top-two brand vendors Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer still led Lenovo with about four million notebooks every quarter in the first three quarters of 2010, while the third-largest Dell only had a gap of less than one million units with Lenovo each quarter, and so will the be vendor seeing the most threat from the two's cooperation.