Tag: tablet PCs

Notebook shipments on the rise again

Posted on November 18, 2014 by - News

notebooksA survey has suggested that tablet sales are declining in the face of increased notebook sales.

DisplaySearch, bought by HIS recently, said in the third quarter of this year, notebooks rose by 10 percent compared to 2013 to account for 49.4 million units shipped. The figures contradict other estimates which suggest that sales are weak or flattish.

But tablet PCs, in the same quarter, fell by eight percent.

DisplaySearch said the slump in demand for tablet PCs helped the growth of notebook sales.

In particular, growth of notebooks was helped by low priced Windows based notebooks PCs and by Chromebooks.

The leaders worldwide for notebooks are Lenovo (20%), HP (19%), Dell (12%), Acer (10%) and Apple (9%).

These five companies between them hold 69 percent of total notebooks shipped worldwide.  Apple sales of the iPad declined in the third quarter by 13 percent.

DRAM is strong, NAND is sluggish

Posted on April 8, 2013 by - News, Products

nand-chipsIndustry analysts believe the memory sector will continue to do relatively well despite a decline in NAND demand. Although NAND might not be a very hot commodity, DRAM sales are expected to surge, reports The China Post.

The price of 2GB DDR3 chips in the first quarter rose 57.8 per cent, while NAND prices rose by 19.8 per cent, according to TrendForce. Strong demand for tablets and smartphones seems to be boosting DRAM sales, and the fact that an increasing number of vendors are introducing Android devices with 2GB of RAM should also help.

However, strong demand could also result in even higher DRAM prices. TrendForce believes the price of 4-gig DDR3 DRAM modules has the potential to rise by another 30 per cent. The outfit points out that the high season for mobile device launches is drawing near, which means more demand should be expected.

Although DRAM prices will remain strong, NAND prices are expected to decline in the short term. NAND prices should remain relatively stable, due to a reduction in supply.

It might sound a bit counter intuitive, but it is worth noting that smartphone and tablet peddlers are not increasing the amount of NAND storage in their devices. Most devices still ship with 8GB or 16GB of storage, while high end gear tends to ship with 32GB, or in some cases 64GB. This is in stark contrast to market trends just a couple of years ago, when each new generation of devices tended to offer a twofold increase in storage.

On the other hand, the amount of RAM is steadily growing. Three years ago smartphones used to ship with 512MB, which was upped to 1GB for the last two generations and as of late last year we are seeing an increasing number of Android devices with 2GB of RAM.

Samsung eats into Apple’s tablets

Posted on February 1, 2013 by - News

Samsung HQ in CaliforniaResearch firm IDC has released a set of figures showing that Apple’s dominance in the tablet market has started to slide.

But Samsung effectively doubled its market share in the last quarter of 2012, according to IDC. The Galaxy tablets sold nearly eight million units representing a market share of 2.2 million.

Apple, on the other hand, has seen its market share slip from 51.7 percent to 43.6 percent, although it sold more units.

IDC said that the last quarter of 2012 saw worldwide sales of tablets rise to 52.5 million units, a rise of 75 percent.

It’s not a direct correlation, but PC shipments fell in the last quarter of 2012. But even though Microsoft introduced the Surface tablet towards the end of last year, it only sold 900,000 units.  The price of the Surface is hurting sales, IDC believes.