HP, Asus and Acer are moving some PC production back to China from Thailand and Vietnam, Nikkei Asia reported. AI demand is driving up the cost of memory and storage chips. Dell is considering a similar move, people familiar with the matter told Nikkei.
Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-fang broke the story for Nikkei Asia on 28 October, citing industry sources. The shift partly reverses the “China+1” strategy. Under it, PC makers built factories elsewhere in Asia to rely less on China. TNW has not independently verified the report.
“The move is really driven by cost pressures,” a chip industry executive told Nikkei Asia. The executive’s company supplies all major PC makers.
Memory and other parts have risen so sharply that PC makers struggle to absorb the costs, the executive said. Chinese contract manufacturers offer highly competitive pricing, the person added.
The PC makers are not going back to their usual Taiwanese assemblers. Quanta, Compal, Inventec and Foxconn are focusing on AI data centre servers, Nikkei reported. That leaves room for Chinese firms such as Luxshare, Huaqin Technology and Longcheer Technology to win PC orders.
The Chinese manufacturers offer efficient production, a skilled workforce and access to memory chips made in China, according to Nikkei. Another supplier executive told Nikkei that they are sending representatives to court big PC brands with lower prices.
China also keeps an edge in peripheral and structural parts, Counterpoint analyst Ivan Lam told Nikkei. Other countries still struggle to match it there.
The move follows years of shifting the other way. In 2023, Nikkei reported that HP planned to move a large share of its laptop production out of China. Thailand, Mexico and later Vietnam were the targets. In August, Nikkei reported that HP, Asus and Acer had started using some memory from China’s CXMT. It went into a few notebooks sold outside the US.
Processors, memory and storage made up about 68% of a mainstream notebook’s parts bill in the third quarter, according to research firm TrendForce . In the first quarter of 2025, they made up about 45%.
TrendForce expects the share of notebooks made outside China to fall from about 24% in 2025 to 21% this year. It could drop below 20% in 2027.
Chipmakers do not expect the shortage to ease soon. SK Hynix has said the memory shortage will last until 2030. Intel’s finance chief, David Zinsner, gave a shorter outlook on the company’s earnings call this week, Stevie Bonifield reported for The Verge .
“Make no mistake, we are not optimistic about next year in terms of memory,” Zinsner said.
Memory makers are meanwhile posting record results. Samsung reported a record quarterly profit on AI memory demand this week, and China’s CXMT has swung to profit as memory prices soar.
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