Gartner says netbook market share go on falling due to tablets

2nd September, 2010 by adina
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It is likely that netbook market share keeps falling mainly due to tablets and this could last a few years, according to a study by Gartner. The portables have lost market share during the first two quarters of this year and they are supposed to be on a long slide leading to a drop to just ten percent by the end of the year 2014. Analyst Raphael Vasquez explains that this is a consequence of many people buying netbooks as a cheaper version of notebooks and loosing interest in them now, when full-size notebooks do not cost much more.

According to the Gartner analyst, the recent decline of the mobile PC market only reflects the general idea among buyers that netbooks are less perfect substitutes for the standard low-end laptops that it was believed.

Although researchers did not believe the iPad would so much hurt netbook sales, due to its starting price of $499, they had to acknowledge that its cost was perhaps one of the only elements that kept Apple’s tablet from having even a deeper impact. Gartner has not counted tablets having mobile operating systems as being full computers, but it is sure that a cheaper iPad and some of its clone tablets should deeply affect the market over time.

The impact could be more or less important than interpreted, but it is significant that ASUS has lowered the shipments of its Eee PC at a moment when sales should reach their peak, probably accounting for the iPad effect.

Considering computers as a whole, the estimate for growth of the group relative to the second half of 2010 has been dropped down to 15.3 percent, about two percent less, because European and American economies are still supposed to restrict spending. Intel has warned about low computer sales and this was the sign that home PC buyers at least were not eager to buy anymore. Analysts did not predict a worse situation than last year, because computers were still necessary and corporations also have no choice available but to buy.


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