2008 and beyond, laptops are taking over PCs to satisfy professional, educational and personal demand

According to the Gartner Group, worldwide some 257.1 million PCs shipped in 2007, and 60 percent of them were desktops. PC growth for 2007 was around 7% while laptops grew by 18.6% and will continue to maintain a double digit growth at least until 2010. Desktop sales are still strong in the EMEA and Latin America with about 60% of all shipments.

In the US alone, the laptop shipments grew in 2007 by 21 percent while Desktops sales went down four percent last year. By 2011, IDC expects laptops to represent 66 percent of corporate purchases, with 71 percent of consumers opting for a notebook instead of a desktop.

The slowdown in the United States economy in 2008 has reduced PC sales. For the first-quarter 2008 computer sales rose in the United States just 3.5 percent. Worldwide, computer sales rose by 14.6 percent, IDC said. Laptops will account for two third of the worldwide PC shipments by 2011, according to a new report by IDC.

In all markets, the growth came from laptop sales to the detriment of desktop sales. The PC market is changing from “one PC per household to one PC per person,” said Bob O’Donnell, vice president of clients and displays at IDC.

With other countries maintaining double-digit PC sales growth as the United States slows, the United States represented 23 percent of the world market, down from 25 percent last year.

Specific reasons of the evolution from desktop to laptop:

Due a constant drop in price rapid technical improvements, the swift evolution and extension of the WAN technology, the multiplication of applications and their effects on our lifestyles, notebooks are destined to replace desktops in most areas both professionally and at home.

- Price: While laptops are still more expensive than desktops for the same power/capacity, the gap is constantly narrowing. In 2000 you could expect to pay almost double for a laptop comparable to average desktop priced around $1,000. In 2008, you can expect a $300 to $500 difference depending on brands. Entry level laptops start in the $300 range while the mid range is situated around $700, a huge difference from just five years ago.

- Power: In the early 2000s, any heavy database user or serious gamer would always pick a desktop over a laptop. This barrier has come down drastically; in fact many IT departments have migrated to laptops and only the most serious queries are run on servers. The same applies to gamers where only the most demanding games need to be run on the most advanced desktop. For average use, the desktop no longer has any specific advantages.

- WiFi/Hotspots: The explosion of wifi / hotspots is a decisive factor that helps explain the migration to laptops. Airports, hotels, trains, restaurants, coffee shops… are among the location where you can actually go online at a very comfortable speed. You can even use such tool as Skype with a wireless laptop and have video conference anywhere you have WiFi access. Indeed more and more people go on vacation with their laptop and most hotels including the cheaper ones are now offering free wifi as commodity not a luxury.

- Portability/visibility: Laptops are continually getting lighter while screen sizes are getting bigger. Most new laptops come with 17 inch screens and weigh less than 7 pounds. Those with 15 inch monitors generally weigh less than 5 and in some instances less than 3 pounds.

- Professional market evolution: Past laptop growth in the professional sector was fueled by travelers (sales, tradeshow, meetings…). In the last decade working from home has steadily developed with many companies allowing their employees to work at home anywhere from one day a week to full time. These are often perceived as cost savers, productivity booster and flexibility factors for both the employees and employers. More and more online applications are designed so that you can work remotely with the same tools available in the office. Such online applications include:

-         Audio/Visual conferencing

-         Placing calls

-         Document sharing and storing,

-         Scheduling,

-         Webmail,

-         Software accessability. The software i.e. Microsoft Office is stored on a server, you can use it on your laptop (via a small application installed on your laptop)

-         Messengers…

Events such as the slowdown of the economy and the explosion of gas prices will continue to accentuate that trend.

- Educational market evolution: More and more educational institutions are requiring their students to have laptops; it started in the universities and his working its way to the younger students. In addition, once students get used to laptops, rarely do they buy a desktop later on for themselves.

- Personal market evolution: decreased price, increased power and improved portability with the explosion of hotspots have been essential to the switch from desktop to laptop. Furthermore, the multiplication of applications for personal use have affected our lifestyle and are starting to make the laptop as indispensable as cell phones are today. Such applications include:

-         DVD player,

-         Video On Demand,

-         Picture display,

-         Music player,

-         Internet radio

-         Games,

-         GPS,

-         Communication (Skype, messenger…),

-         Social gathering (facebook, myspace…).

The desktop are evolving more and more in a different market demand such as Media PC environment (TV tuner, DVR, radio, music) for the home or used as back up device for your laptop. Chances are that when it is time to replace your DVD player you will may buy a PC. This will enable you to download TV shows on your computer and watch them on your TV.

What’s next for laptops?

- They will continue to improve in the traditional “way” catching up with the desktops in term of power, capacity and price, replacing desktop for most needs.

- Another aspect is the extra portability evolution already underway with mini laptops, palmtops, tablet PCs and touch screen laptops. Combining extreme portability, WiFi and tactical screens, these mini laptops will replace gradually paper and pads, order sheets, notebooks and others... As you write or type or write any information on your mini laptop (orders, notes, drawings, questionnaires….) you have the ability to immediately save, sync or communicate the results.

Conclusion

As the sales demonstrate, the PC industry as a whole is growing steadily worldwide. Laptops are now undeniably taking the lion share of that growth. The range of laptops is large enough for anyone’s demand from desktop replacements to ultraportables. They allow us to perform personal tasks (accounting, gaming, reservations…) to educational (research, reading, interactive, video, audio) and professional (documents, programming, calls, conferences, scheduling, emails) from anywhere, at anytime, also allowing us to mix all these activities.