The guys from Fudzilla proudly announced the results of a recent Digitimes Research study. Its stakes? The ever-changing notebook market, a market that has recently slowed its descent into oblivion. According to the above mentioned study, last quarter, notebook sales ‘only’ dropped by 1.2 per cent. Good news?
While these numbers should make notebook websites break into celebration, we have to take a closer look at what caused this slow down.
Firstly, notebooks have always had a certain novelty value to them, even though they have been ubiquitous for the past twelve years. But the newest Macbook or gaming notebook was never a “top priority” for any buyer. This means that the notebook market has always been vulnerable. From netbooks to nettops, smartphones, media players, smart TVs, tablets, and phablets, every new multimedia and mobile technology has threatened to make “notebooks” obsolete.
While this has buried some laptop vendors and slowed down the sales of many others, it never put a stop to the entire category. The laptops are still here, scratched but undefeated.
Secondly, the closing gap between desktop and notebook components has made the laptops of today reasonably powerful machines. A decently equipped notebook can hold its own on battery for a couple of hours, but it can also run graphic intensive applications or multimedia content without struggling or overheating. This makes notebooks a strong contender for replacing desktops. Instead of struggling with cables, keyboards, mice and a large screen that all take a lot of desk space, you can get all you need with a single machine while keeping everything within an affordable budget.
So yes, you can work, play games, watch movies or practice your hobbies on a notebook, without the inconveniences of a bulky desktop or the technical impossibilities of a smartphone. This also explains the ascent of gaming and business notebooks, and the fact that ultra-portable notebooks seem to be a growing segment for a couple of years now. Notebooks have their own positioning and it is hard to come up second, when nothing else is competing.
Last, but not least, people make their technology choices in a certain order. Now, the average user already has a decent smartphone (which he changes more or less frequently), a powerful notebook or an ultra-portable one, and eventually a desktop computer, not to mention smartwatches, tablets and other devices he or she probably forgot in a drawer. Undoubtedly, at some point, we all upgrade our desktop and change our laptop, but we do it a lot less often than say, our smartphone. Most users see their old laptops as “good enough” and less as a status symbol like a smartphone or tablet, the market for laptops is there and this will not change any time soon, just that it no longer offers room for growth.
To conclude, the good news is that notebooks are not going anywhere. The bad news is that the market is not going anywhere either. Since a new “revolution” is unlikely in the near future, the ship is stuck in port! However, luckily for us, it is a cruise ship equipped with everything we need for our daily vacation.
Leave a Reply