Light relief
With the depressing figures for the US economy still sinking in, we're happy to bring you the news that, despite the weather, notebook sales in the UK in Q4 2010 were considerably up on the same period a year before.
Sales volume was up five percent, but sales value jumped by a much more impressive as average selling prices were around £40 higher than a year ago. This improvement was all the more remarkable considering Windows 7 was launched in late 2009.
"This growth proves that despite the distractions of new products such as tablets and the difficulties brought by the snow, the UK consumer remains committed to the Notebook as their chosen main computing device," said GfK IT account manager Christopher Kennedy-Sloane.
The main reason Kennedy-Sloane gave us for the figures when we spoke to him is a better understanding on the part of consumers of the difference between a netbook and an entry-level notebook. It looks like they've realised that if they're going to get a notebook they might as well get a full-featured one.
"To explain why the prices of Notebooks have risen so much, it's best to look at specifications," he said. "Whereas over 90 percent of netbooks in the UK for 2009/2010 had 1GB of RAM as the standard specification, only 6.6 percent of notebooks by volume did in 2010, compared to 16.1 percent in 2009. This shift has mostly been to 4GB, rather than 2GB or 3GB, and while only 23 percent of notebooks in 2009 were sold with 4GB of RAM, in 2010 33% of all notebooks sold had 4GB of RAM."
