A Great Year for B2C Laptops in 2009 – What will be the 2010 Success Story?

26 January 2010
International, Insights

With the CES in Las Vegas now over for another year, it is time to assess the market and take stock. Just what are the new technological products for 2010?  

3D TV was of course of principal interest. The first Televisions to feature this new technology should appear in our living rooms from the second half of 2010. LED TV has gained a firm foothold in the market and looks set to develop further this year. Sales of Smartphones, so successful in 2009, will remain in tremendous public demand. Other notable products destined to establish themselves on the market include eReaders and the Tablet PC.

GfK Retail and Technology analysts look forward to tracking and monitoring the progress of these new innovations in 2010. For now, we will focus on a product that has exhibited a strong performance in the past two years, the Laptop.  

Focus on the Business to Consumer (B2C) PC market

The Worldwide PC market for 2009 is estimated at US$115 billion, or 151 million units sold. This product category is second only to the TV market in terms of performance.

PC market growth was strongly impacted by the crisis in 2009 in terms of both value (-3% in 2009) and volume (+6% only in 2009).

This apparently negative statement is put into perspective when we take a closer look at the market. If desktops fail to maintain a positive trend (volume: -13% in even worth in value), on the other hand, laptops clearly support the worldwide market in volume (+20% in 2009) and in value (+7% in 2009).

This evolution can be explained by the emergence and strong performance of netbooks. This new market segment does however have a much lower sales entry point than previous mobile computers and this partly explains the decrease in average price (of nearly US$850) for laptops, equal to a decline of -11% over 2008.   

In conclusion, laptops share of the total PC market in 2009 is more and more prominent (64% of total PC quantities). This trend is clearly more relevant in some regions than others. However, 2009 marked a change of direction: in all seven worldwide regions (Western Europe, Eastern Europe, North America, LATAM, Asia, Middle East and Africa) laptops outsold desktops.

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The findings are based on real, POS sales data from over 400,000 retailers worldwide through GfK Retail and Technology's recently launched ‘Digital World’ service. The database consists of manufacturing sales data in the US and retail sales data in the rest of the world. 

Working with the CEA, the North American industry authority, this brand new comprehensive global database allows all those with an interest in the IT, Telco and CE markets to compare, contrast and forecast their portfolios in detail for the first time.