facebook rss twitter

IDC: mini-notebooks take Europe by storm

by Scott Bicheno on 17 February 2009, 07:00

Tags: IDC

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaq2d

Add to My Vault: x

Disrupting the PC market

As we reported in our earlier interview with IDC following the publication of its initial Q4 figures, PC growth in EMEA is being driven primarily by Western European consumer demand for notebooks and the share of that sector that's represented by netbooks is increasing rapidly.

IDC's final results have now been published and, as you would expect, they confirm that trend. IDC is still sticking to the mini-notebook monicker, preferring not to follow the herd and adopt the Intel-invented term netbook. It confirmed that 3.6 million mini-notebooks were shifted in Q4, which represented 30 percent of all consumer portables.

"As expected, mini-notebooks were one of the most sought-after items in the Christmas season, particularly in Western Europe, which represented over 80% of volumes," said Eszter Morvay, research manager at IDC's EMEA personal computing group (pictured).

"Driven by strong vendor and channel push, consumers benefited from the plethora of new models appearing on the shelves from October onwards, and the explosion in the product offering stimulated fierce competition for shelf space."

It was also confirmed that the telco channel was a significant contributor to sales, as mini-notebooks are increasingly used as incentives in telco bundles.