It appears that the worldwide slow economy has seriously taken its toll on the personal computer market, which failed to rise to the expectations of PC vendors in September. As a result, analysts are now predicting that customers will continue to search for better deals, thus forcing the hand of PC vendors into lowering the prices for their products, even before the beginning of the holiday season.

 

According to a recent article on the online edition of the Sidney Morning Herald, the prices for computer systems appear to be holding steady for the time being. However, due to the fact that buyers are constantly looking for more ways to save money when purchasing a PC, companies will try to lower prices in order to avoid a possible unsold inventory on the last day of the year.

 

Moreover, there is yet another factor that could lead to vendors seeing their high-end products not sold. As most of you already know, the low power, low-cost portable computer systems have slowly taken up a significant part of the market, in terms of shipped units. The so-called netbooks have helped several systems vendors maintain a steady growth margin, in spite of the worldwide slow market demand. However, analysts now predict that netbooks could actually cannibalize the sales of fully-fledged laptops and desktop systems, despite helping vendors keep unit volumes steady during the holiday shopping season.

 

Almost every major PC marker has already introduced its version of a netbook system, which they tend to see as a secondary computer for households, rather than a fully functional computer system that can deliver everything a user requires in a small and low-cost form factor. On the other hand, the leading PC companies have already introduced some lower cost systems designed to be more powerful and also a bit more expensive than current netbook and nettop systems. On that note, Apple's idea of an affordable portable computer system is to cut the price tag of its $1,099 MacBook to $999. “We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk,” said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

 

The way things are going at the moment, netbooks and nettops have a pretty good market segment that is expected to remain in the spotlight while the economy is still low.