Recent rumors that the market growth of netbooks is slowing are confirmed by Gartner, even if the market research firm does not believe that the iPad has already affected netbook sales and brought them down to a crawl.
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Gartner says that mini-notebooks or netbooks will ship 41.8 million units in 2010, up 30% from 32.1 million in 2009. Netbooks will account for a share of 18.6% of all mobile PC shipments in 2010, but they will not be able to keep pace with the overall rapid growth of the segment and suffer a share decline to 13.9% in 2014, the market research firm said.
“The mini-notebook segment will be impacted by increasingly competitive ultralow-voltage (ULV) products, the decreasing prices of all mobile PCs and the maturing preferences of consumers,” said Raphael Vasquez, an analyst at Gartner. “Some consumers purchased mini-notebooks based solely on price. Many consumers are now choosing purchases up the price curve rather than at the bottom of it.”
According to Gartner, mobile PC shipments grew at a pace of 43.4% in the first quarter of 2010 year over year. The firm said that “this year-over-year growth is the highest the mobile PC market has experienced in eight years and represents about $36 billion in end-user spending.”
Despite the hype around the iPad, Gartner believes that netbooks were “a big part of the bump in mobile PC shipments”, but there has been an obvious slowdown “in some regions as consumers begin to understand the limitations of mini-notebooks, especially in the face of aggressive price cuts of regular notebooks,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
The average selling price (ASP) of mobile PCs was $732 in the first quarter of 2010, a 15.7% decline from the first quarter of 2009, when the ASP was $868.
Gartner does not believe that tablets will hurt netbook sales this year substantially, with sales expected to hit about 10 million units. “Media tablets will not impact the mini-notebook segment this year,” Vasquez said. “However, media tablets, such as the iPad and similar devices, will significantly detract from mini-notebook shipments in 2013 and onward, when we expect their prices to be lower and, more importantly, their functionality to be more similar to mini-notebooks.”
Total PC shipments are estimated at 376.6 million units in 2010, a 22% increase from 308.3 million units shipped in 2009. Worldwide PC spending is predicted to reach $245.4 billion in 2010, up 12% from 2009. Gartner believes that consumers will be the driving force behind climbing PC sales this year.
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