Counting on consumers
Considering what a tumultuous year this has been, there was a surprisingly familiar feel to the insight offered by IDC research manager Eszter Morvay, in her first HEXUS.TalkingShop interview since last February.
Back then, we spoke about how the main growth in the European PC market was coming from netbooks (or mini notebooks as IDC prefers to call them). Several months later, that's still the case, as consumers remain the drivers of growth.
With desktops increasingly becoming a niche category, and alternatives like all-in-ones and nettops achieving limited traction, the focus is still very much on mobile PCs. Businesses are still being very cautious about spending money and are expected to stay that way for a while.
The one big change on last February is that netbooks have been joined by the ‘thin-and'light' category of larger notebooks, running either Intel's CULV processors or AMD's ‘Congo' platform. These are typically more expensive than netbooks, but still priced at mass-market levels, and put a premium on style and portability.