NPD Group Blog » More Evidence That PCs Remain Alive And Kicking

More Evidence That PCs Remain Alive And Kicking

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
By Stephen Baker, Vice President, Industry Analysis

As we enter 2012 and the thunder around tablets starts to increase we once again offer some results that show that the industry is not in as dire shape as some would believe. Today, NPD released the 2011 results from our sales tracking in the U.S. Reseller market (primarily DMRs) and through major broad line distributors - and surprise - the PC market performed pretty well.

The top line results in the release showed sales overall grew by 20 percent in units and 14percent in dollars, and that both notebooks and desktops increased by around 20 percent in unit volume in 2011. Of course all of this was on top of robust growth of 27 percent in 2010. Even during the recession of 2009, commercial channels couldn’t get PCs, especially notebooks, quick enough. Notebook volume jumped 37 percent in 2009 versus 2008.

Underneath these results are some truly interesting data points that show the health of the PC market through the channel. Notebook PCs saw an ASP of $764 in 2011, down just 5 percent from 2010 and actually up $4 from 2009. Desktop PCs also showed remarkably strong average selling prices, with 2011’s ASP of $638 down just under 3 percent from 2010, and up from $625 in 2009. Finding stable pricing anywhere in the IT hardware marketplace is a difficult task but in such a high-profile market as the PC market it is impressive. Equally impressive is the fact that despite these minimal price drops both desktops and notebooks have grown units in double digits in each of the last two years. The results has been the addition of 4.5m extra units, and approximately $2.2b, sold in 2011 versus the volumes posted in 2008 for all PCs.

Some of this is clearly the result of manufacturers making decisions to invest incrementally in the reseller and distribution channel as a way to reach the smaller businesses that have been growing their PC purchasing over the last year (as we mentioned in a blog post a few weeks ago). This investment has been primarily the result of the premier access the channel has to the SMB marketplace. NPD’s SMB Technology Monitor showed that 32 percent of expected PC purchases from SMBs with 50-999 employees were expected to be made through VARs and DMRs, the primary resellers in these channels.

Finally, the brand competition between HP and Lenovo also provides a strong source of motivation and sales strength in the channel. Over the past four years approximately 60 percent of all sales through these channels have been to one of these two brands. And according to NPD’s SMB Technology Monitor that is likely to continue as these two brands have the highest sales conversion rates to SMBs with 50-999 employees of any of the channel centric PC companies. It seems that by the objective measure of sales that business demand and the channel volumes show that the PC market has delivered strong results over the past four years. Despite the trials and challenges of the last four years NPD’s commercial and distributor POS data show that PCs continue to outperform the industry in both sales growth and channel opportunity and the SMB monitor points to continued demand ahead in 2012.

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