Doom in the Irish Desktop market…but not across all form factors

The Desktop market in Ireland makes up around 10% of all PC sales in volume. Unfortunately it has been a declining market throughout all of 2010, year to date down 31%.

There are four main form factors which make up the desktop market; Tower, Desk, All in one and Micro. Not all desktop computers have faced a downfall in sales, the AIO and the Micro desktop have seen year on year growths.

AIOs accounted for 17% of the Desktop PC market in volume in July. With an ASP €400 higher than your average Desktop PC, in value share AIOs hold 28% share. There is now a greater choice of AIO’s than there was a year ago, 44 different models compared to just 25 last year.

The Micro desktop, like AIO, is recording positive sales. YTD the Micro has grown by 4%. However it finds itself in a different niche of the market compared to the AIO.  The Micro Desktop, as the name suggests, is very mini. They are space saving, can be tucked away or clipped onto the back of a monitor and their ASP is for most brands, very low. The Micros price lies around €200 lower than the average for the market.

The tower segment (vertical boxes, smaller than the older traditional Desk PCs) makes up around 77% of all desktops and YTD are seeing sales dwindle by 38%. You can understand why then, despite the AIO and Micro sales going from strength to strength, the overall Desktop PC market suffers.

If the AIO and Micro products can continue to grow in share and absolute sales, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel for the dismal state that the Desktop market sits in at the moment.