Battery, component shortages denting laptop sales

It appears that there's a ripple effect from the battery recall.

Compal, one of the biggest contract manufacturers in the world, said it won't be able to fill 100,000 notebook orders because of battery shortages during its third quarter conference call on October 23 in Taipei.

"Fourth-quarter demand is strong. But shortages of batteries and DRAM could affect orders for the quarter," Compal President Ray Chen told an investor conference, according to Reuters.

Compal makes notebooks for Dell, HP and others and is considered the second largest manufacturer of notebooks in the world, behind island rival Quanta.

Meanwhile, Acer, which has been the fastest growing PC maker in the world for the past two years, said that October notebook sales would dip by around 20 percent in Taiwan from the pace in the third quarter because of shortages of batteries, memory and other components.

Acer is also telling its sales engineers to be careful when ordering components and to make sure that the supplier does in fact have the parts. Acer wants to avoid delivery delays.