2008: Five 'peaks' of laptops

The global PC market is moving ahead with the growth momentum of 15.2%, far exceeding the forecast of 12.8% of analysts released in March.

According to research firm IDC, sales of notebook computers will peak at the end of 2008, when growth rates reach 34.5%. This number is impressive, as it will break the record of 33.9% in 2007, and nearly 3 times higher than the modest estimate of 13.4% for 2009.

After years of strong growth, Asia / Pacific (excluding Japan) has officially surpassed the United States to become the world's largest PC consumption region at the end of 2007.

Following closely is Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Europe. Meanwhile, the US market continued to grow at an average of 5-6%, far behind the growth rate in emerging markets.

However, according to IDC, until the second half of next year, the laptop market will cool down gradually. Since 2012, the growth rate will only fluctuate below the 9% threshold only. By the end of December 2008, PC makers will ship about 310 million units. Half of them are notebooks. The rest are desktops and servers.

Laptop to the top, gradually cool down

Although the desktop-server block still has a bigger market share, the difference between them and notebooks is quickly disappearing.

Even in 2009, the market share of notebooks also surpassed the number of desktop notebooks with 104.9 million units sold. This is a good news for the computer industry, because notebooks and laptops often have higher prices than desktops.

" It guarantees them higher sales. Laptops will not force manufacturers to embark on a risky price war, just to increase sales (as in the case of previous desktops) ," IDC commented. .

An emerging power in the laptop market, according to IDC, is the cheap mini laptop. " This year's growth rate of nearly 40% will have a significant contribution ."

In previous forecasts, IDC did not take into account low-cost notebooks because they " use non-traditional PC designs, custom operating systems, weak processor and tight storage capacity ". However, with the reputation and attractiveness of products like Asus EEE PC or Intel's Classmate PC platform, IDC was forced to change its mind. In fact, the number of cheap cheap laptops "is increasing day by day".