14 DAY TRIAL // One of the main problems that the laptop industry has to deal with right now is the stagnation in Europe.
It's bad enough that the troubles hitting the notebook market get blamed on it almost every time, at least in part.
This time is no exception. Shipments of 15-inch devices are said to be dropping even as 11.6-inch models are seeing more and more demand.
This is made even worse by how shipments went up from 20.07 million in 4Q12 to 16.9 million in 1Q13.
That's a sequential drop of 15.8%, and may be trumped by the one in the second quarter.
The reason 11.6-inch notebooks are doing better is because they didn't sell much at all before, but now Microsoft is licensing Windows for them, and Intel is providing preferential pricing to brand vendors for upcoming Bay Trail Atom CPUs.
ARM and Google's Android OS have helped the small form factor as well.