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Consumers are turning back to traditional notebooks after tablet sales declined in Q3, according to Context data.
While much of the consumer personal systems growth last year and in the first half of 2014 had been driven by tablets, the third quarter of 2014 saw ‘a clear shift in consumer demand back to traditional notebooks’.
Consumer-targeted clamshell laptop sales in UK distribution increased by 20.3 per cent versus one year ago, while tablet sales declined, says analyst Context.
"There were a number of reasons for this," said the company in a statement sent to PCR.
"Tablet demand on the one hand was impacted by increasing saturation levels and longer-than-expected product life cycles, and notebook demand on the other hand benefited from home users’ need to replace ageing home systems and migrate from Windows XP.
"Arguably the strongest reason however was the launch by a number of vendors, of a range of low-end budget clamshell notebook systems in time for the back-to-school season."
Benefiting from the Microsoft Windows with Bing initiative and low-end Windows 8.1 offers, sub-£200 sales made up 35.1 per cent of sales in the segment versus 15.2 per cent last year.
Average distributor sell pricing went down accordingly, from £300 last year to £285 in Q3 2014.
"Low-end notebook offers boosted at least partly by the Windows with Bing initiative are expected to continue to drive consumer PC sales in the run up to Christmas," predicts Context.
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