Notebooks Outsell PC For First Time in History
by Taylor Flatt on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:57 pm EDT - 220 views
For the first time in history, Notebooks have outshipped the PC in the third quarter. By nearly 100,000 shipments, Laptops have shipped 38.6 million units (rose 40% since second quarter) whereas the PC shipped 38.5 million units (dropping 1.3% since second quarter). This is truly a historic day for the laptop industry especially for Acer, whos share in the market has driven them less than 2% behind Dell (#2). Although HP still holds the reigns, in the next year we could see a shift from Dell, the once industrious and userfriendly company, to Acer the up and coming power in the Laptop industry.
I personally don’t find this surprising. Not only do people require laptops more and more but schools are beginning to make the switch from hundreds of PCs, to providing individual laptops to their students. I believe this trend will continue for years to come and with the tight race now commincing, this will only lead to better and more efficient products.
Come the beginning of the year, it will be interesting to see if any companies make any big moves to try to get on top early. Any ideas?
Source: Reuters
There are 12 comments so far
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Dalton - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 PM MST - Link
i hope not. Laptops are good for the portability, but desktops can run so much more. This is another example of people wanting to be able to do exactly wat they want instead of waiting until they get home to use their desktops. Instant Gratification will kill us.
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Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 8:28 PM MST - Link
Indeed, I see your point. But you are missing a whole side to this. There are a lot of people who use laptops for business reasons (powerpoints, portable desks, data entry) and those people always opt for laptops over desktops. I see where you are going by waiting, but like they say, “Time is money”.
However, desktops are more powerful and will be so for a long time. It is like comparing the xbox to the desktop. Although they are somewhat similar, the desktop owns the xbox. That is the same case with the laptop and desktop, but with the laptop you can move it and use it in more situations than you could with the desktop.
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Nathaniel Ed - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:07 PM MST - Link
The desktop is way better. Notebooks are good if you need portability, but I really see no use for them past that. They’re good for word processing for students and business men and the people who buy xbox’s: Middle aged men who read books on database theory, hates games like Mario because they’re too “kiddie,” since everyone knows it’s graphics and not gameplay that makes a game good, buy one or two sports games a year, and have no love life because they’re so wrapped up in “the next big game” (Source: Maddox).
Laptops are useless for gaming. And imo they’re crappy for typing too. It’s an inconvienient interface, since you have to reach all the way across the bottom part of the base, and not to mention you don’t have to recharge desktops.
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Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 PM MST - Link
All valid points Nathaniel but I have a few questions…
1) I can’t believe you quoted Maddox.(not really a question).
2) No one buys laptops for gaming, they are ignorant if they do.
3)Laptops are made for portability so that is the point of them and nothing more.
4)Actually, you do have to plug in your desktop, to power. If you didn’t I can still run mine and you can’t…pwnd.None of those were really questions, but oh well. But I believe it is a combination of both graphics (70%) and gameplay (30%) that makes a game. I don’t wanna play a game that is boring no matter how good the graphics are.
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Nathaniel Ed - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 PM MST - Link
Lol, number two and three proved my point.
And they don’t have to be recharged as I said. They have to be powered up, sure, but you don’t have to recharge it after a period of time. Reading what I said correctly fail.
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Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 PM MST - Link
No, I stated the point of laptops (being business and portability related) and it is proven they aren’t meant for gaming. They can be used for it (they can have decent cards and mice and things like this) but usually not used for this.
Bottom line being the whole point of laptops are from what I said and what you’ve said. They can be very powerful machines and the original point of computers was information (internet and word processing) and not gaming. That only came later when people caught on like they did to consoles. So really, if you look at the computers in a general sense, it covers 75% of what the desktop does with 45% the size of the machine.
So by saying laptops suck means nothing when you look at it in context. But of course, things will always be more powerful when they are bigger (think pc vs. console).
Like I said to begin with, I see your points, but you are also looking at it all too cynically. So by saying PC is better than laptop is to simplify it too much and generalize the usage way too much.
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Nathaniel Ed - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:21 PM MST - Link
From my own viewpoint, desktops pwn, for the reasons stated.
And besides, you haven’t argued my “even crappy for typing” point I made in my original post. I don’t have much experience with laptops other than the school ones, but those are horrible for typing. I don’t know why anyone would buy one of those. I guess I can’t generalize based on the school ones, but those have left a bad taste in my mouth.
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Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:36 PM MST - Link
Those 4yr old 13″ dell laptops are terrible. We only had those because they had to buy like 100 or some of them so they got them cheap as they could.
Past portability, they can be used for everything a desktop can. I will say it, they can game, but not great (RTS/Siming). Laptop’s main function is used for portability but it can do all of the things a desktop can. I bought a laptop for those reasons. I have a desktop but I use my laptop more now because it is more convenient and I can literally take my whole computer with me everywhere I go. I also use it as a portable movie theater whenever I go on long drives and data storage to transfer things to and from other computers.
I know what you mean about the school laptops though, but I believe we will have some macs next year so you will have good experiences with those. Trust me, if those are the only things you have worked with laptop wise, you have missed out on years of development and progress my friend.
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Nathaniel Ed - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:41 PM MST - Link
Hmm, perhaps then. The school ones definately leave a lot to be desired. But I hate Steve Jobs and Apple. It will probably still suck after he retires. Even Microsoft is better. And, imo, Windows is one of the few great things it has. IE is bad, they tried to make Halo 2 vista only, and xbox’s are horrible.
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Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:46 PM MST - Link
Lol..Well not to really get into a discussion of consoles…
Performance: PS3 > Xbox360
Graphics: PS3 < Xbox360
Power: PS3 > Xbox360I don’t enjoy a lot of Microsoft’s products. The only things I am looking forward to is that table where you can touch it and stuff like that and Windows 7. However, Apple has capitalized where Microsoft has not and I give them rep for that.
But to be totally serious…anything will be better than the ones we have now.
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Nathaniel Ed - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:52 PM MST - Link
Haha, true.
Hail Nintendo lol.
Performance: PS3 > Wii
Performance: Xbox360 > Wii
Graphics: PS3 > Wii
Graphics: Xbox360 > Wii
Power: PS3 > Wii
Power: Xbox360 > Wii
Actually releasing things people want to buy: PS3 < Wii
Actually releasing things people want to buy: Xbox360 Wii
Appealing to middle aged men who only buy one or two sports games a year: PS3 & Xbox360 > Wii -
Taylor Flatt - posted on December 23rd, 2008 at 10:55 PM MST - Link
This is definitely not going off topic. So to wrap things up, I believe that the laptop can and is commonly used for things such as portability and has the ability to do things that the desktop can do just as well. I personally believe laptops are better but desktops are logically more powerful (in most cases).
