Computers are expected to be bestselling gifts for the holidays
Personal computers are likely to be among this holiday season’s bestselling gifts as consumers upgrade to higher-performance systems and switch to notebook PCs, but the highest demand is coming from outside the United States.
Sales are being driven by falling component prices, entertainment applications such as games, videos and music, growing demand for portable machines, and consumer adoption of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system.
Those trends are stoking sales of computers from Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc., Apple Inc. and Acer Inc., among others, according to researchers. A weaker dollar is helping drive sales in Europe.
“A lot of laptops go with the gifts under the trees,” said Gregory Spierkel, chief executive of Ingram Micro Inc., the world’s largest distributor of PCs and computer products.
“We’re seeing pretty good progress with notebooks across the board,” Spierkel said. “I see that trend continuing for the current quarter.”
Computers topped holiday wish lists in a recent survey by the Consumer Electronics Assn., beating out peace and happiness, big-screen TVs, clothes and money, in that order.
Some of the biggest buyers are consumers in emerging markets whose rising incomes are allowing them to make big-ticket purchases for the first time, according to market researcher IDC, which is forecasting 12.6% growth in global PC shipments this year, up from 9.7% in 2006.
In the United States, PC shipments grew at about one-third the rate of the worldwide total of 15.5% in the third quarter, reflecting the importance of emerging markets in boosting computer sales, IDC said. U.S. consumer confidence remains strong despite housing and credit turmoil, analysts said.
The PC is enjoying a resurgence after several years in which digital music players, mobile phones and automotive gadgets such as global positioning systems topped consumers’ holiday wish lists, analysts said.
No longer just a staid workhorse for handling word processing, e-mail and other basic computing tasks, the PC is becoming an entertainment hub in and out of the home, thanks largely to faster Internet connections that bring high-quality video to computer monitors.
“The computer market has legs,” said Roger Kay, president of market researcher Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. “That’s surprised a lot of us [who wondered], ‘Haven’t people gotten tired of this yet?’ The answer is, ‘They haven’t.’
“You still need screen real estate to do certain things, particularly to enjoy entertainment,” Kay said. “The digital entertainment era is coming into its own. Ultimately, both audio and video entertainment are most conveniently enjoyed these days on some kind of computer platform.”
Hewlett-Packard of Palo Alto remained the market-share leader by unit sales, followed by Round Rock, Texas-based Dell, China’s Lenovo Group Ltd., Taiwan’s Acer and Japan’s Toshiba Corp.
In the United States, Dell held the top market-share spot in the third quarter, followed by HP and Apple, which shipped 15.9% more Macintosh computers than in the year-earlier period, IDC said.
Apple benefited from strong back-to-school sales and its image as an innovator after it introduced the iPod music player and the iPhone, which went on sale in June.
Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., was among the first computer makers to promote the home computer as a digital hub linking PCs, music players and other hardware with software and online services such as Apple’s iTunes music store.
