14 DAY TRIAL // Even if PC sales worldwide are declining steadily, giving way to tablets, it appears that the educational environment is not shunning them yet.
Research firm NPD Group reports that in the Back-to-School period PC sales fared better than expected. There’s still declining, but not as much as one would expect. The Back-To-School season takes places between June 30 and Sept 7 in the United States.
NPD notes that overall PC shipments went down with 2.5% compared to last year. Vice President of Industry Analysis at NPD, Stephen Baker sees the glass half-full stating that these results are “better than the almost 4% decline from the first half of the year.”
The reason why sales weren’t so low in this period is Chromebooks and touch-based Windows notebooks. That’s because prices were axed down considerably to suit the budgets of students and parents alike.
“Chromebooks and Windows Touch helped offset what could have been much steeper declines in the back-to school season. If the product’s available at attractive price points, consumers are going to buy it.”
Windows touch-enabled notebooks accounted for a quarter of all sales in the period, with more than 33% of devices being priced under $500 / € 371.
“After a slow start following the launch of Windows 8 last year, touch screen notebooks saw significant and accelerating momentum during back-to school. The rapid roll-out of under $500 devices put touch much more aggressively in front of the key back-to-school consumer and created incremental demand.”