Quanta Computer, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of notebooks, said it plans to start producing devices under its own brand. The company has all chances to become an important player on the market of notebooks and other mobile devices, however, the reaction of Quanta’s large customers is currently unclear.

Barry Lam, the founder and current chairman of Quanta said during a meeting with investors that Quanta said that Quanta would return to the consumer-electronic market by self-developing sales and distribution channels, and may work with telecom carriers to sell new products, reports China Economic News Service. According to cited undisclosed industry sources, initial products from Quanta would be mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and that they would be demonstrated by the end of the year.

Quanta, which is believed to produce 33% of all mobile computers in the world, manufactures products for such companies as Acer Computer, Alienware, Apple, Cisco, Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Gericom, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Maxdata, MPC, Sharp, Siemens AG, Sony, and Toshiba.

According to Mr. Lam, Quanta now has considerable financial, business and technical stability to enter the consumer market with own-brand devices. The head of Quanta indicated that current customers of Quanta were not particularly interested in MIDs since the market of such devices still has to take off.

Last year Asustek Computer, another contract maker that also sells own-brand devices, had to spin off contract manufacturing business since its customers did not want to compete against its fabrication partner at the same time supporting them.

CENS notes that this year, Quanta tied up with Microsoft to push Syspine own-brand voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phones, and partnered with global industrial computer brand Kontron AG of Germany to push Quanmax own-brand industrial PCs.

Tags: Quanta, MID