Quanta and Asustek to Produce Intel Macs

[MacRumors]

Emsnow claims that Quanta and Asustek have obtained the contracts for producing Apple's newest Intel-based Macs. The production appears to begin in the 1st quarter of 2006.

Quanta is reportedly responsible for the PowerBook while Asustek will produce the iBook.

The article is poorly translated, and so the specifics are difficult to interpret.

[Linam]

Excellent finally intel PB 1st quarter!!

[bbyrdhouse]

Don't know about you but this article seems a bit odd to me ..."Apple is occupying less and less market share."... I thought Apple marketshare was increasing.
"Apple initially used Apple processors provided exclusively by IBM." Huh?
To my knowledge there is no such thing as an "Apple" processor. They have most recently been using processors from Motorola (Freescale) and IBM.

Does anyone know the accuracy rate for EMSNow?

I gues that why this is a page 2 rumor.

[runninmac]

Doesnt seem to reliable. The 1st quarter??? Seems a little late to being production if Macworld SF is the 10th.

[Doctor Q]

Originally Posted by runninmac

Doesnt seem to reliable. The 1st quarter??? Seems a little late to being production if Macworld SF is the 10th.

They don't have to be manufacturing Intel Macs in order to announce them and their delivery schedule at MWSF. They only have to be manufacturing them in time to meet the delivery schedule itself.

[mdavey]

If this story is to be believed, Apple will announce both an iBook and a PowerBook laptop at or soon after MWSF, with the later known as "PowerBook M1" (whether that is just a codename or not?).

[mdavey]

Originally Posted by bbyrdhouse

"Apple is occupying less and less market share."... I thought Apple marketshare was increasing.

I assume that the author meant revenue - Apple slashing its prices in order to sell more units and hopefully benefit from economies of scale (means that they make less money on each unit and their laptop lines are less protfitable than HP or DELL until those economies of scale kick in).

[iSee]

There are demonstrably incorrect facts and analysis in this short article. It doesn't mean it isn't correct about the main assertion of the article, but the publication obviously has little experience covering Apple.

[bbyrdhouse]

Originally Posted by mdavey

I assume that the author meant revenue - Apple slashing its prices in order to sell more units and hopefully benefit from economies of scale (means that they make less money on each unit and their laptop lines are less protfitable than HP or DELL until those economies of scale kick in).

I find that hard to believe considering an article I read yesterday that said that Apple currently gets processors for their laptops at around $75 per unit as opposed to Intel selling Pentium M at around $200 per unit. And Apples laptops are generally a good deal higher in price compared to Dell or HP.

I am not trying to be crual but I think that whoever wrote the article itself probably is unfamiliar to the Mac platform. Some of the things it said were so obviously incorrect that only a person that was unfaliar with Apple's product line would say.

I guess thats the long way of saying that while it's probably true that Quanta and Asustek will be manufacturing the new iBooks and Powerbooks the general information given in the article seemed to be misinforming to me.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by iSee

There are demonstrably incorrect facts and analysis in this short article. It doesn't mean it isn't correct about the main assertion of the article, but the publication obviously has little experience covering Apple.

Seems like translation issues too...a lot of this is clearly the work of someone with a very poor grasp of English.

IIRC, there have been rumors numerous times in the past about sourcing arrangement changes like this, that have not turned out to be reliable. Like when there was supposed to be a widescreen iBook this year.

[Peace]

If anybody could make a good MB for the Mac it would be Asustek..

[BenRoethig]

Quanta and ASUS tek already have the contracts for the current notebook line, so this is nothing new or unexpected.

[SiliconAddict]

Does anyone know anything about Quanta? Not finding a whole heck of a lot with a google search.

EDIT: OH GOD THEY MAKE THE DELL LATITUDES! I hope it was older Latitudes. The current Latitude's (Last two years or so) quality sucks my fat white [bleep]

http://www.laptopworldwide.com/laptops.html#Quanta

* ASTAST Bravo and Ascentia
* Dell Latitude (which Dell licenses from AST)
* WinBook XP
* Ergo SubBrick
* Austin StepLite Notebook

[JeffTL]

I'm pretty sure Quanta is the present iBook manufacturer; hopefully a shift to Asus won't cause too many problems.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by SiliconAddict

The current Latitude's (Last two years or so) quality sucks my fat white [bleep]

You were going to say fat, white iBook, right?

[thejadedmonkey]

Originally Posted by SiliconAddict

Does anyone know anything about Quanta? Not finding a whole heck of a lot with a google search.

EDIT: OH GOD THEY MAKE THE DELL LATITUDES! I hope it was older Latitudes. The current Latitude's (Last two years or so) quality sucks my fat white [bleep]

http://www.laptopworldwide.com/laptops.html#Quanta

* ASTAST Bravo and Ascentia
* Dell Latitude (which Dell licenses from AST)
* WinBook XP
* Ergo SubBrick
* Austin StepLite Notebook

"Quanta has made notebooks for Compaq, Gateway, Dell, IBM, and Apple. It has probably made them for Toshiba and Sony as well, but thsse companies don't always announce these kind of OEM deals. Quanta does not manufacturer under its own name and only deals with companies that can order a minimum of 10,000 notebooks a month." -theregistar.com (I think)

I'm not worried, because I think as long as apple keeps demanding a high level of QC, they should be fine. the real issue is, what's up with apple's QC anymore?

[ccool2ax]

Does it matter who makes my next 'Book? Wow, this is less accurate than a Mac OS Rumors post.

[mkrishnan]

Originally Posted by ccool2ax

Does it matter who makes my next 'Book? Wow, this is less accurate than a Mac OS Rumors post.

Sorry, I cut right in with the jokes too... I think the point is not who is going to make them. I think that part is not a surprise. But I think this is supposed to be interesting in terms of timing of manufacturing and whether or not there will be computers available in January shortly after Macworld, or if they will really not come until the summer, when they were originally promised....

[SiliconAddict]

Originally Posted by ccool2ax

Does it matter who makes my next 'Book?

I don't know. Do you care if a company has a good or bad track record with their computer assembly process? Having a *book means exactly jack squat if a segment of soldering comes loose in the system and fries it or if the fans inside the laptop dies. I personally care about the manufacturer.

Originally Posted by thejadedmonkey

the real issue is, what's up with apple's QC anymore?

Apple has QC? Since when?

Originally Posted by mkrishnan

You were going to say fat, white iBook, right?

Since when has an iBook been fat....well maybe PHAT.

[CaptainHaddock]

This jibes with press releases I found a while back stating that American Megatrends (AMI) had deals to provide Quanta and Asustek with its Aptio EFI technology. Aptio 3.0 is specifically designed for Intel's new dual-core processors, so Aptio will probably be replacing OpenFirmware in the iBooks and Powerbooks.

Most likely, Apple was the real buyer of AMI's Aptio, but AMI wasn't allowed to mention that in their press releases. (Secrecy, you know.)

By the way, I think Quanta and Asustek have been manufacturing Macs and iPods for quite a while.

[eXan]

Hmm... I think it's not good. PC manufacturers manufacture Macs?

[CaptainHaddock]

Originally Posted by eXan

Hmm... I think it's not good. PC manufacturers manufacture Macs?

Think of them more as generic computer fabricators. Apple's an engineering and design company — they don't want to run factories, so they (like most computer makers) hire someone else to fabricate the final product. What matters is the design and components chosen, which is why cheap Dell bricks and beautiful Apple computers can come from the same factory.

[Randall]

Originally Posted by mdavey

If this story is to be believed, Apple will announce both an iBook and a PowerBook laptop at or soon after MWSF, with the later known as "PowerBook M1" (whether that is just a codename or not?).

Yeah PowerBook M1 was my guess as well. It makes sense if you think about it, being an intel pentium M processor inside, and the first generation of intel Powerbooks.

[Randall]

Originally Posted by eXan

Hmm... I think it's not good. PC manufacturers manufacture Macs?

Well it's got the guts of a PC now, so what did you expect? Don't worry about these manufacturers. They're solid. The bottom of the notebooks will now say, "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in Taiwan by Quanta." LMAO.

I mean, just look at this fine craftsmanship on the AST Ascentia? assembled by Quanta.

[iMeowbot]

Quanta have been building iMacs and Apple notebooks for years. Asustek have been building shuffles and iBooks for a while. Nothing is changing here.