Global notebook sales tank in recent months
One company bucks the trend big-time. Wanna guess which one?
Global notebook shipments took it on the chin in the third quarter of this year, with Acer, Asustek, and Toshiba seeing sales plunge by 15 to 25 per cent when compared to the previous quarter.
One notebook vendor, however, bucked the trend, with sales of its notebooks climbing nearly 30 per cent during the same period. Care to hazard a guess as to which company that might be? Yup, Apple, which updated its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air offerings in June to generally favorable reviews.
Despite Cupertino's success, the entire notebook market was down 4.5 per cent quarter-to-quarter, and a full 11.6 per cent year-on-year, according to the study by the market-watchers at Digitimes Research.
Think how bad notebook sales might have been had Apple not refreshed its lineup (source: Digitimes Research)
Asustek also suffered the indignity of watching its fourth-place global ranking in the second quarter drop to fifth in the third quarter – a quarter, by the way, which often sees strong notebook sales due to back-to-school purchases.
Digitimes Research blames the global notebook sales decline on – what else? – that pesky economic downturn, along with retail-inventory adjustments and customers postponing notebook purchases until after Windows 8 goes on sale on October 26.
The Windows 8 roll-out, of course, was not a factor in the soaring sales of Apple's MacBook Pro and MacBook Air notebooks – would that Linux-laptop lovers could have such a pronounced affect upon the notebook market. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Bad Apple cultists
"Apple cultist?" How about people wanting an "ultrabook" with more than 1333x768? I don't care what you sell, if it isn't a MINIMUM of 1440x900 you can GTFO.
Re: Bad Apple cultists
@Boris: Or perhaps they want a *nix version that commercial software runs on - who'd have thunk it?
Re: The problems are segmentation and bundling
I've got a Rπ in just such a set up except its inside a gutted portable DVD player bought from a car boot sale for £1. It's ok and it's a little bit smaller than an original eee701 but I still prefer to just use my phone with a keyboard attached. (Though I do find I need remote X occasionally which Symbian doesn't do.)
The problems are segmentation and bundling
If Acer, Asus or Toshiba thought that there were a few customers waiting for Windows 8, they would arrange a deal with Microsoft for a Windows 8 license to be included in the purchase price. Customers could buy a machine now with Windows 7 and upregrade for free later.
I got my current laptop cheap because it could not run Vista. Windows 8 is a dissapointment because it does not promise to make several models of potential Linux machines a reasonable price. The thing that annoys me most about the laptop market is segmentation. To get the (cheap) features I want I have to buy something with expensive features that have no value to me.
If this laptop breaks so badly today that I cannot fix it again, my best choice would be to put a π in a briefcase with a monitor, battery, hub and some USB peripherals. If I need a big CPU, I already use my desktop via secure shell. I will always be able to get spare parts for a π in a briefcase, and I will be able to upgrade piecemeal instead of having to buy a new LCD, battery and box just to upgrade the CPU.
Linux laptops
When linux laptops will be easily available they may impact the numbers.
I am looking to buy a new laptop but been postponing it for about 2 years now because I would like to buy a linux laptop without having to pay for the MS software. Preferable a netbook to carry with me and if possible at about the same price (or cheaper) than a MS laptop. Asus have (had ?) one model of the eee pc that was certified for Ubuntu so my guess was that it would also work with debian since I am not liking the Ubuntu upgrade system (current laptop was found unable to upgrade maybe because of some symbolic links or whatever)
My problem is that I left the "I have too much time on my hands so I ll research for a few days to find what I really want" state and that I am now am looking for something that will work. I don't think I have excessive demands.
light enough to carry around, if possible HDMI output, linux, LAMP and that is about it. I live in Japan and buying from system76 will almost double the price in shipping so that is not really an alternative.
