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Netbooks took a fifth of mobile PC biz in Q2

Big demand in US, Europe

Netbooks increased their share of the overall notebook computer market during Q2, accounting for 22.2 per cent of shipments of mobile PCs during the quarter.

So says marker watcher DisplaySearch, which added that that figure was up from 17.8 per cent in Q1 and from 5.6 per cent in the Q2 2008.

Given the frequency with which netbooks are touted as a way of getting the populations of developing countries onto the internet, by far the majority of netbooks that shipped during Q2 ended up in the West.

North America took 26.6 per cent of the netbooks shipped during the period, while Europe, the Middle East and Africa - three very different markets yet still, bizarrely, counted as one - took 32.9 per cent of netbook manufacturers' output.

By contrast, Japan, a nation noted for its fascination with miniature computers, took just six per cent. Latin America accounted for 6.7 per cent, Asia Pacific 9.2 per cent and Greater China 18.6 per cent.

Even allowing for relative population sizes, those numbers show a distinct bias for developed markets, we think.

DisplaySearch noted that, in Europe in particular, a lot of these machines are being sold by telcos, who subsidise the cost of the hardware out of the proceeds of selling two-year data airtime contracts. This is now happening in the US and Canada, the researcher said, but noted that it's too early to tell whether such schemes are successful there. ®

Latest Comments

Not sure about the validity

You could have lumped microwave sales in with electric oven sales in the 1980s, and said sales of home cooking devices had gone up. But in fact most microwaves were bought by people who already had a cooker, so the sale of microwaves gave no clues at all to the health of the thermal cooker market.

I'm not sure it is valid to lump netbooks in with the rest of the "mobile market" and assume you are learning anything.

I have one, running Suse 11.1, and I use it for very different things to my flaptop. I use it as a web tablet, and as a replacement for my dab radio. And for VOIP

Perhaps sales of netbooks should be lumped in with DAB radios? or with cordless phones?

I think these numbers really mean:

* a lot of people bought into a new product category

* in other news, laptop sales are down

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