Sub-prime 'woes' infect world’s laptop market
So why is outlook unchanged?
The world’s economy may be going down the pan, but PC sales are holding up pretty well. In Q2, demand from BRIC – Brazil, Russia, India and China - held firm, while fire sales in the US fuelled big shipments.
Everywhere, people want laptops. Especially Small Cheap Computers. How long can this last? The big Taiwanese laptop maker Compal is expressing caution – but not enough yet to trim ambitious shipment targets.
In an interview with Taiwan’s The Economic Daily News, Compal boss Ray Chen said “the subprime woes have caused an impact on global demand for laptops” (thanks to Reuters for the translation). Over at Quanta, Taiwan’s other big laptop supplier, vice chairman C.C. Leung is ready to sound the alarm, “if the global economy deteriorates”. But the company says it remains on course to hit its 2008 shipment forecast of 40 million laptops.
These guys make laptops for just about all the big name PC makers, so their views are worth listening to. But the global economy is indeed deteriorating. So how are their shipments are immune from this?
The emerging economies will have to become a lot more emergent, and quickly, if they are to compensate fully for the inevitable downturn in demand from the West. ®
COMMENTS
laptop over desktop
easy reason, easier to move and take with you when you loose your house.
Or
Or as always service and equipment purchase cycles usually lag by somewhere in between six to twelve months because they were in the previous years expense budget allocation of capital expense funds prior to the crap hitting the fan , and since they are replacing older junk mostly well past it's use by date who is going to say no ?
Alas all economies have a lag cycle as it travels slowly from the top down anyway and when it finally hits the street level where the ordinary man lives , it comes in with a big bang thus !
more like Vista woes
Its a lot more difficult to find drivers for XP on laptops than desktops. Which is why Im no longer buying new laptops, as I dont want to get stuck with a $2000 laptop that wont run XP properly. People who do these statistics really should not be coming up with there own conclusions.
downturn in demand from the West?
I don't see downturn either, for reasons like:
1) Demand for better replacement products still exists - today's laptop is better than a PC of 4 years ago
2) Service economies (e.g. UK) are spent out more than other parts of Europe (DE, PL)
3) There are signs of memory prices dropping, but demand for whole systems drops later than memory
So why is outlook unchanged?
... because it is such completely crap software that the software engineers haven't got a clue where to start trying to fix it.
