14 DAY TRIAL // It appears that netbooks haven't started actually declining in sales, but they definitely aren't going to skyrocket as much as some expected early last year, at least according to reports.
The entire point of the netbook is to provide prospective buyers with an easy to carry means of accessing the Internet and performing any other basic computing tasks.
Their low prices, compared to notebooks anyhow, let them rise in sales very rapidly during their first years.
Unfortunately, for their suppliers anyhow, they are no longer as sought out, even though it is still expected that their sales levels will rise, on year, in 2011.
More specifically, it is reported that global netbook shipments will grow by less than 10% instead of 12-15% as originally expected.
Needless to say, tablets are, again, seen as the main cause for this, since they can handle most of what netbooks can do, plus better multimedia (more or less), physical keyboard or no.
This is compounded by the fact that slates also seem to be having a detrimental effect on notebooks and, thus, on the laptop segment as a whole.
Meanwhile, the prospect for desktop personal computers seems to be more optimistic that before, especially when compared to the rate from 2008 onwards.
While desktop sales never went over 5% growth each year, it is expected that 2011 will see an improvement of 7-8%, even though original estimates were of 3-4%.
This is, mostly, because, while slates have been replacing netbooks and/or notebooks in the “laptop while traveling and desktop at home” scenario, this means that the latter sort of PC has nothing to worry about from the mobile market just yet.
Of course, it also helps that new processors and chipsets have come out this year, leading to a completely new generation of motherboards and, thus, possible PC configurations.