The global shipments of netbooks surged to nearly 4.5 Million in the first quarter of 2009 despite economic downturn, indicating to people’s strong inclination to buy them.
The global shipments of netbooks jumped seven folds to nearly 4.5 Million in the first quarter of 2009 against the corresponding period last year (2008), said IDC, as reported by COMPUTERWORLD.
Netbooks accounted for around 8% of total PC shipments in the first quarter of 2009. Acer had emerged as the top netbook vendor in the fourth quarter of 2008 with the market share of 32%, followed by Asustek with the market share of 26%. Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Samsung followed Asustek. Moreover, IDC has predicted that the netbook shipments will climb up to 22 Million by the end of the current year.
Netbooks are the latest gadgets that have recently entered the computer world. At a time when the world is facing an economic storm, netbooks represent inexpensive alternative for laptops.
Although the device faced some initial criticism which seriously hampered its growth, netbooks have been performing exceedingly well since early 2008. In fact, netbooks have received positive response from consumers as secondary device owing to its lower price and smaller size. Despite consumers’ conscious spending amid recession, the sales of low-priced netbook tremendously escalated.
People’s expectations about the functions of netbooks vary from person to person according to their requirement. For instance, students use them to take notes in the classrooms as they don’t want to carry heavy laptops. Besides, netbooks are used by many people for word processing and Internet surfing.
Industry experts have expressed confidence that shipments will pick up with the opening of schools in the third quarter of 2009 and may jump significantly in the fourth quarter of with the start of holiday season.
Computer firms that performed badly last years are now increasingly focusing on the emerging markets like Kenya to offset the loss by declining sales abroad. The current economic slowdown is wiping the gains in other markets, but the regional market customers are looking towards HP so as to increase their efficiencies and hence save costs.
According to a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “As the recession has impacted the purchasing power of consumers to a big extent, they are shifting towards the inexpensive netbooks. The uptrend in netbook sales indicates that it will account for a big share of the worldwide computer market in coming years.”
Related Market Research Reports:
China Software Market Forecast to 2012
Semiconductor Industry Forecast to 2012
Booming Consumer Electronics Market in India
