Global PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased 22.1 percent year-over-year to surpass 90 million units, according to Gartner. However, worldwide shipments were largely driven by sales of low-cost notebooks and netbooks to price-sensitive consumers.
Though the research firm does not yet have a preliminary average selling price for the PCs sold in the fourth quarter, it expects that the decline was steeper this time around than in prior reporting periods, noted Mikako Kitagawa, a principal analyst at Gartner. “The price point is shifting to the lower side in the consumer market.”
Low-cost mini-notebooks — dubbed netbooks by many vendors — have been accounting for a little less than 20 percent of the total mobile PC market. “Though we do not have mini-notebook numbers for the fourth quarter of 2009 yet, we expect that their share will go up to over 20 percent,” Kitagawa said.
Salvaging Decreasing Margins
According to IDC, the U.S. PC market shipped nearly 20.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009 — equivalent to year-on-year growth of 24 percent. The research firm attributed the rise to the unprecedented duration of price cuts during last year’s holiday shopping season, when buyers focused on the vast array of value-oriented notebooks and low-cost netbooks that dominated the channel landscape.
Despite lingering uncertainty over the economy, consumers responded to aggressive pricing, IDC analysts observed. The launch of Windows 7 also provided PC vendors with a modicum of additional help in the United States.
However, the trend toward lower pricing does not bode well for PC makers going forward, noted Jay Chou, a research analyst at IDC. “Without an effective strategy to convey a clear usage model and feature set tied to each segment, the market will inevitably continue down the slippery slope of ‘good-enough’ computing sold to the lowest bidder,” Chou said.
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