In our private lives we all despise traffic. It slows us down and deprives us of making full use of our time. Too much (fill in the blank) in too little space. In our professional lives as a retail tracker we have the opposite view … traffic is good. Retailers love traffic. Sellers love traffic. Crowds are great. We all want more and more shoppers, because we all know more shoppers lead to more buyers.
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One of the biggest stress points of this holiday season in the PC business has been the status of the emerging class of small notebooks, dubbed “netbooks.” While netbooks have been around for about a year, until very recently, they were the province of the early adopter with a heavy ecommerce bent. According to NPD’s retail tracking service, 88% of all netbook sales were made in ecommerce between Q4 2007 and Q2 2008. Even in Q3, the largest notebook opportunity of the year, netbooks in ecommerce outsold those in traditional retail (2/3 to 1/3). But in October we finally got a taste of what the netbook market could really be as netbooks finally hit the volume opportunity of U.S. retail. In October, 60% of netbook sales were at retail, and unit volume nearly equaled the entire volume of Q3. To put the opportunity in real context, for those who think ecommerce sales are a significant netbook opportunity, the sales results for netbooks in Q4 2007 through Q2 2008 represented less than 1% of consumer notebook sales. Even in Q3, when sales began to appear in retail, netbooks were less than 2% of all notebook sales. Finally the October numbers show some real measurable volume with netbooks accounting for over 6% of consumer notebook sales and early November results show netbook sales at about 5% of total volume.
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Consumer Technology | Stephen Baker, Vice President, Industry Analysis | 
May 28, 2010 1:35 pm | 
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