Laptops outsell desktops for the first time...again.
By Peter Rojas 
posted Jun 4th 2005 3:18PM
posted Jun 4th 2005 3:18PM
Break out the champagne, everyone, because it's finally happened: for the very first time laptops have outsold desktops! According to research firm Current Analysis, sales of laptops accounted for 53 percent of the total PC market last month, up from 46 percent a year earlier. Oh yeah, there's only one problem: this is almost exactly the same news that was reported in May of 2003, when the New York Times (among others) wrote about how for the first time, "Laptops accounted for more than 54 percent of the nearly $500 million in [US] retail computer sales." Ah, the amnesia of tech journalism.
Om the one hand a laptop appeals to me to, the hardware's really caught up to the desktop with PCI Express and decent 3D adapters. But on the other hand I like "hotrodding" my pc-tower too much. The housing hasn't been closed in 2 years and there a 4 piece IDE raid array sticking out the back.
Sadly the speed of laptop harddrives is VERY disappointing. I benchmarked a brand new HP Pavillion's harddrive at a meager 30MBps, while my desktop has no problem delivering 50MBps. Now that's a difference you notice when booting and processing large files.
Interesting that both times have been in May. I'd have expected September (for kids going to school). I wonder why May? People going on vacations want to take laptops with them?
Complaining about the speeds of laptops seems weird. You keep using your fast computer under flourescent lights. I'll be computing on the beach (or whatever). You can still use your desktop at home, man!
Solution's simple. Have the box at home to tinker with and then get a laptop. My friend is going off to college in a couple months and has bought a Sony T-series laptop [10.6" screen, 1.2GHz Pentium M, wireless A/B/G/Bluetooth connectivity, etc]. I will be helping him build a moderate Athlon 64 [probably a Venice-core 3200+ overclocked] with 2GB of RAM and several hundred GB of hdd. For rendering and editing, he will use the machine in his dorm, which incidentally he already bought a monitor for [Dell 2005FP]. Get the best of both worlds-have the beastly rig as a non-portable and then take the laptop wherever you want to go.
@#2(particular):
I think you're right and wrong... yes, kids get laptops for going to college, but it's really common to get them as a graduation present (which is happening now).
i think this is referring to the number of laptops sold vs pcs sold, not amount of revenue from laptops vs revenue from desktops, which is what the story from 2003 was reporting on. i could be wrong.
No. 4, you're probably correct. The average laptop is more expensive than the average desktop, so if you sell $251m worth of laptops and $249m worth of desktops there are still more desktops being sold. Only now are the numbers also favoring laptops.
#4, a lot of electonics stores push May and June as "Dad and Grads" time with a lot of high school and college greaduations occuring and then Father's Day around the corner. A lot of kids will get the laptops now as presents and the ones for the Dads could be ordered in May also to be shipped in time. If my wife could swing it I'd love to get a 17" widescreen laptop as a replacement but we can't.
Isn't the 2003 result about the retail PC market, and the 2005 report about the *entire* PC market? Retail is only a fraction of the whole picture.
Right on Vasu.....
Units vs. dollars...that's all
Its a sign that HARCORE pc gaming(Doom 3) is becomming less popular. Since people dont need to run high end games they get a laptop for portability.
Perhaps they're both right?
I haven't read the details but one specifies number of machines, the other the revenues.
Since notebooks are typically more expensive, it could be that less than 50% of the machines could account for more than 50% of the revenue...
Thus several years ago the revenues could have been more then 50% and now the physical number of machines has increased over the 50% line as well.
In fact it looks like I don't read previous comments as well as details.
Our findings for May 2005 refer to retail units. Revenue for notebooks in the retail sector has been higher than desktops for sometime, as indicated in the 03 story. Obviously due to higher ASPs.
-Sam.
Our findings for May 2005 refer to retail units. Revenue for notebooks in the retail sector has been higher than desktops for sometime, as indicated in the 03 story. Obviously due to higher ASPs.
-Sam.