Tag: notebook PCs

Tablets are the flavour of the enterprise month

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

cheap-tabletsIf an enterprise is thinking of deploying BYOD (bring your own device) programmes tablets are better than notebooks or smartphones.

That’s according to Gartner, which said that if an enterprise spends half a million dollars to deploy 1,000 enterprise owned tablets, it’s making a mistake.  Because the same enterprise could support 2,745 user owned tablets at the same price.

Federica Troni, a research director at Gartner, said direct costs of user owned tablets are 64 percent lower and offering a BYOD option is the best way to keep costs down while broadening access.

She said that users’ own smartphones have a total cost of ownership similar to enterprise owned smartphones. They will only deliver savings when organisations don’t reimburse or subsidise voice and data plans.

There are problems, however, in the tablet BYOD idea.  Users will have to at some extent doing their own support and they will also have to be to some degree IT savvy, she said.

Outlook gloomy for notebook PCs

Posted on October 28, 2014 by - News

notebooksThere’s darkness at the end of the tunnel for vendors of notebooks, it appears.

Digitimes Research said that while notebook sales in 2014 fell by 2.1 percent in 2014, next year isn’t going to be too brilliant either.

It expects a further decline of 1.7 percent worlldwide in 2015, with shipments amounting to 168 million units.

The research outfit said that Microsoft Windows 10 is unlikely to bump up demand and efforts made by Microsoft to stimulate demand by reducing licensing fees aren’t going to turn things round.

It predicts declines in shipments of notebooks all the way through to 2018.

But every cloud has a silver lining because at least it will mean the price of notebooks will fall in 2015, partly due to Microsoft’s cunning plan to make machines with 11.6-inch notebooks sell for under 2015.

Chromebooks are expected to make additional depradations on the traditional Wintel notebook.

Notebook shipments in Q2 to remain weak

Posted on April 8, 2013 by - News, Products

notebooksIncreasing demand for tablets, coupled with weak demand from China, is expected to hit notebook shipments in the second quarter.

According to Barclays Capital, global shipments will tumble 17 per cent from Q4 2012, traditionally the strongest quarter for notebook shipments. Notebook sales in Q2 usually grow by about 6 per cent, but Barclays believes shipments will grow only 4 per cent this year. Yang attributed the decline in demand from China to the ever increasing demand for tablets.

Barclays analyst Kirk Yang believes the weaker than expected growth also reflects delays in the introduction of new models. Both Intel and AMD are about to introduce new mobile processors and a new generation of touch enabled Ultrabooks is also on the way.

Taipei Times reports that Quanta, the world’s leading notebook ODM, is simply not receiving many orders. International brands are reluctant to place large orders, as better gear is just around the corner.

The really bad news is that things will not pick up anytime soon. Weak demand will plague the market well into the fourth quarter of 2013.

There are some technical challenges as well. Next generation hybrids and convertibles aren’t making much of an impact on the market yet. A shortage of touchscreen panels means that the production of touch enabled notebooks won’t pick up until later this year, which will roughly coincide with the rollout of new Intel mobile chips. SSDs remain prohibitively expensive for some market segments and they are still reserved for quite pricey SKUs. The same goes for high definition 1080p screens in sub 14-inch market.

In other words, consumers who don’t opt for high end devices really don’t have much of an incentive to upgrade.

PCs plunge as smartphones and tablets soar

Posted on March 27, 2013 by - News

ipad3The latest survey of connected intelligent devices from IDC has revealed what we were all beginning to suspect – the day of the PC has gone, while tablets and smartphones continue their inexorable ascent.

The survey covers PCs, notebooks and smartphones.

IDC thinks that shipments of tablets will exceed desktop PCs in 2013 and topple notebook PCs next year. The tablet market is expected to grow year on year by 48.7 percent, representing 190 million units, and the smartphone market  will grow 27.2 percent to 918.5 million units.

Apple did better than expected in the fourth quarter of 2012, closing the gap with Samsung. That’s because of sales of the Apple iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini, meaning that Apple had 20.3 percent unit shipment market share compared to 21.2 percent for Samsung.  However, from a revenue point of view, Apple had 30.7 share compared to 20.4 percent for Samsung.  In short, Apple kit is more expensive.

During the rest of the decade, tablets and smartphone sales will continue to rise, as they are taken up by emerging markets.  Notebook PCs will only show single digit growth and desktop PCs will continue to fall. By 2017, desktop PCs will show to practically no growth.

Megha Saini, IDC research analyst, said that in emerging markets in particular, consumer spending starts with mobiles but move directly to tablets before they think about PCs.