Apple shines as PC industry fights way back from decline

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 09:56

Business IT - Technology

“TBR believes recovery will be slow, in part because average selling prices will not rebound – particularly in the PC segment – and as competition in servers and storage will continue to impact top-line growth as vendors concede on hardware pricing to win the attach of software and services.”

TBR also says that, what it calls the “burgeoning trend” to subsidise portable PCs with buyer commitments to data services, signals a significant change in the PC market.

“In this market, PCs are now in danger of becoming secondary to services, unless the device in question is a dominant product, such as the RAZR or iPhone,” Gottheil says.

“Wireless broadband vendors have announced deals that provide free or reduced-price netbooks with two-year subscriptions to wireless data services plans. Currently we believe this will be met with limited success, but as services become more attractive moving forward, we believe this purchasing model will become more common in the consumer market.”