Tag Archives: PCS

Mobile PC Market To More Than Double On Demand For Tablets And Touch PCs, According To Report

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ipad-mini-black

The mobile PC market isn’t doing great, but that’s only if you look at it independently of tablet device sales. NPD DisplaySearch now says that over the next five years, however, the mobile PC market will more than double, growing from 367.6 million units in 2012 to 762.7 million by 2017.

The growth is being driven by a sea change in PC computing, as tablet PCs continually replace your standard notebook form factors, and touch gets built in to more and more laptop devices. Almost every manufacturer now has at least one touch-capable model, which is actually required for Windows 8 certification, and which helps explain ambitious devices like the Asus Aspire R7.

In the near-term, NPD DisplaySearch expects tablet shipments to rise 67 percent year-over-year in 2013, reaching 256.5 million on their own. Notebook shipments are expected to slow in general, down to 183.3 million in 2017, from 203.3 million in 2013. NPD predicts growth for certain categories, including touch-enabled devices, and even projects that devices like the MacBook Air and Ultrabooks will adopt touch in the coming years.

NPD doesn’t see Windows 8 actually driving touch adoption, despite the requirement by Microsoft for certification. That’s probably because of reportedly lackluster sales performance by Microsoft’s latest OS so far, but still the category will grow as OEMs look to invest more in hybrid devices, sliders and tablet-style form factors that could potentially resonate better with where consumers seem to be spending their computing dollars these days.

Despite the generally rosy outlook NPD DisplaySearch paints, the fact remains that now, Apple is the company that stands to gain the most from an upsurge in tablet popularity. It sold around 19.5 million iPads during Q2 2013, representing 65 percent year over year growth, and so far no one has been able to come close to that. Others are slowly making inroads, however, including Asus, which reported its Q1 2013 earnings today, including 3 million tablet sales that offset notebook and PC component losses to the tune of $202 million in profit.

Soluto Brings Web-Based PC Management To Small Business, Ranks The Best Windows Laptops For SMBs (It’s A Mac)

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soluto-iphone

Over the last few years, Israeli IT startup Soluto has morphed from simply being PC software that helps users run diagnostics on their hard drives, to a web-based platform that aims to turn you into a one-person Help Desk. In other words, Soluto now allows anyone to offer remote tech support and run diagnostics, whether that be for your mom’s computer or dozens of customers.

From the beginning, Soluto has been focused mainly on individual users, but today the startup is launching a new version of its remote PC manager that brings a handful of new features and beefed-up support to small businesses. In turn, Soluto is also releasing its first trend report, which compares and ranks the market’s best-selling laptops based on reliability and usability, giving small businesses some basic guidelines to consider when purchasing a new PC.

Lately, as tablets continue to eat into worldwide PC shipments and sales, the forecast for both the PC and for Windows has been increasingly grim. A recent report from IDC last month showed that global PC shipments in Q1 were even worse than it had expected, declining by 7.7 percent. The one bright spot for PCs, however, appears to be small businesses, which are expected to buy over 150 million PCs every year until 2017, Soluto founder and CEO Tomer Dvir tells us.

At the same time, 53 percent of small businesses are frustrated by their computing technology, he says. Soluto wants to be a part of the solution by helping SMBs improve their productivity, operations and the overall PC user experience. The startup’s new “Business” plan gives companies a full PC management and support service starting at $9/month, which the founder says makes it considerably more affordable than comparable services.

With the launch of Soluto For Business, the company will still offer a free plan for up to three PCs (or three sessions/week), along with its Pro plan for up to 10 PCs at $9/month, Business Pro for up to 50 PCs at $60 and a Business Plus plan for enterprise users that want support for more than 50 PCs. The company’s new business product allows IT managers to collect all the PCs they monitor in one place, receive email alerts when things go haywire, along with the ability to fix problems or remotely access a PC with one click from any of their devices.

In turn, the new and improved version of Soluto now includes cloud-based, offline support, allowing users to access PCs and fix problems even when the PC they’re fixing is offline, receive automatic activity reports and tap into better communication tools — all of which apply to each of Soluto’s plans.

With three million downloads to date, Soluto is now analyzing 100 million data points each day, including the frequency and types of crashes, app hangs, blue screens of death, boot times and background noise. When viewed in aggregate and put in context, this data can yield some valuable insights on trends in PC performance and help inform purchasing decisions.

So, today, in conjunction with its new plans and features, Soluto released its first industry report, which compares and ranks the best laptops on the market. From here on out, it plans to release new reports each month, which will be available to Business Pro customers. The report is based on a sample of 150K PCs that were analyzed over three months, including data points taken from over one million boots, 224,000 crashes, 84,000 BSoDs and so on.

In its description of the report, Soluto says that its “big-data frustration analytics” are unique because they’re based on “long-term, ongoing analysis of a huge number of PCs” and take into account events like the ones mentioned above (i.e. crashes, etc.).

In turn, it defends its findings by saying that most other “best of” PC lists are based on hands-on reviews made over the course of a few days, or benchmarking software that pushes the machine to the limits. Instead, Soluto’s report is based on real data taken from the experience of actual, live human beings “in the field” under real conditions. Price was not taken into account.

Without further ado, Soluto’s report found that the most reliable and best performing Windows PC laptop is … The 13-inch MacBook Pro. Ha. Yep. MacBook Pros that run Windows in parallel to its native OS X are the most stable, albeit the most expensive. Soluto’s explanation:

A main factor in this machine’s metrics is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean. Today, with PC manufacturers loading so much crapware on new laptops, this is a bit of an unfair competition. But on the other hand, PC makers should look at this data and aspire to ship PCs that perform just as well as a cleanly installed MacBook Pro.

To its credit, Soluto also lists a few of the disadvantages of running Windows on a Mac, including longer set-up and configuration time and potential driver issues.

In second place, ranking as the top native PC, was the Acer Aspire E1-571. This was surprising even to Soluto’s analysts:

Our data has long shown that Acer machines are very stable and well-performing, but to find the E1-571 so high on the list was surprising even for us. The reason is that Acer’s E series are considered more entry level vs other series, like the V series (which you can find in the 5th place).

Dell’s XPS 13 captured third place, with Dell, Acer and Lenovo making up the rest of the rankings. You can find the full list here.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

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Wall Street Breakfast Editors submit:

Top Stories
PC shipments plunge. Global PC shipments slumped 13.9% on year to 76.9M units in Q1, estimates IDC, which blamed the introduction of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 for the drop. “The Windows 8 launch not only didn’t provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed (it down),” IDC said. H-P (HPQ) was the market leader even though its share fell to 15.7%, while Lenovo (LNVGY.PK) came in at number two and Dell (DELL) at number three.

Japanese car makers recall 3.4M vehicles. Four Japanese car makers have recalled 3.4M vehicles globally due to a malfunctioning inflator in the front-seat airbags, which are made by Takata (TKTDF.PK), although no injuries or deaths have been reported. Toyota (TM) is recalling 1.73M cars, Honda (HMC) 1.14M, Nissan (NSANY.OB) 480,000 and Mazda (MZDAY.PK) 45,500. Takata’s shares slumped 9% in Tokyo, although Toyota’s rose 2.5%


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If you make PCs and you’re not Lenovo, you might be in trouble

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Lenovo, who makes the Yoga 13 Ultrabook pictured here, is the only PC maker whose 2013 has been better than its 2012 so far.
Andrew Cunningham

The bad news keeps on coming for most of the major PC makers, who were already dealing with poor holiday sales. Market research firm IDC reports that first quarter worldwide PC shipments are down 13.9 percent from the same quarter last year, the worst year-over-year decline since IDC began tracking shipments in 1994.

“Fading Mini Notebook shipments have taken a big chunk out of the low-end market while tablets and smartphones continue to divert consumer spending,” said IDC’s report. “PC industry efforts to offer touch capabilities and ultraslim systems have been hampered by traditional barriers of price and component supply, as well as a weak reception for Windows 8.”

In short, netbooks are gone, Ultrabooks aren’t selling as well as they could be, and things with touchscreens are succeeding at the expense of more “traditional” computers. IDC’s report spends much more time blaming Windows 8 for the decline, going on to say that it “appears to have slowed the market” rather than supplying the sales bump that new Windows versions have provided in the past. But Windows 8 is certainly not the only culprit.

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Cramer’s Mad Money – 8 Things To Watch Next Week (3/28/13)

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By SA Editor Miriam Metzinger:

Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money TV Program, Thursday March 28.

8 Things To Watch Next Week: McCormick (MKC), Monsanto (MON), Conagra (CAG). Other stocks mentioned: Dupont (DD), MetroPCS (PCS), Halliburton (HAL)

On Thursday, the S&P 500 took out its all-time high and the Dow gained 52 points. For the first quarter, the Dow finished up 11%. Since 1950, there have only been 8 times the Dow rallied more than 8% the first quarter, and in each instance, the Dow closed up dramatically higher for the entire year. Another good sign is the transport sector is leading the rally; health in transports is a reliable sign of a bona fide bull market. However, there might be some bad news next week that might send stocks down: worries about sequester, and Slovenia’s possible bank collapse. In addition, bears are saying people should sell


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iPads (Thanks To The Mini) Were 1 In 6 ‘PCs’ Shipped, Tablets One-Third, And Windows RT Didn’t Even Break 1M: Canalys

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ipad-with-ipad-mini

The PC market is fast shifting into a touchscreen world, and Apple is leading the charge. Some new numbers from the analysts at Canalys note that in Q4 of 2012, one in every three PCs shipped was actually a tablet, and that Apple’s iPad accounted for about half of them, or one in every six PCs shipped.

Canalys senior analyst Tim Coulling tells me that by “tablet,” Canalys means any computing device with screen of seven inches or more. By combining PC and tablet numbers — a logical thing to do, given that many are substituting tablet purchases and usage for PC purchases and usage — Canalys figures that worldwide PC shipments are actually on the rise — up by 12% on last year to 134 million units for the quarter. That’s in contrast to figures from Gartner, which in January noted that Q4 PC shipments were down by 5% on last year — without factoring in tablets.

Adding Apple’s iPad sales to its Mac sales puts it into the lead among PC vendors. The company shipped 27 million PC units in Q4, giving it a 20.1% share of the market. The number-two vendor was HP, whose market share is based on its PC prowess. It shipped 15 million PCs, for an 11.2% share of the market. That let it edge just ahead of Lenovo, which shipped 200,000 fewer units.

Still, Android continues to make inroads. Canalys points out that this is the first quarter where Apple’s iPad has not accounted for more than 50% of all tablets shipped — it was 49%, as it happens, with Android accounting for 46%.

Apple’s savior was the iPad Mini: “Apple timed the launch of the iPad mini well,” writes Pin-Chen Tang, Canalys research analyst. “Its success proves there is a clear demand for pads with smaller screens at a more affordable price. Without the launch, Apple would surely have lost more ground to its competitors.” Indeed, that fact may well encourage Apple to look at more sizes and price points for its iOS devices in the future.

Overall, Canalys points out that the tablet market grew by 75% in Q4 to 46.2 million units, and that full-year shipments were 114.6 million units. Given that trend, Lenovo, which has been making some interesting hybrid models incorporating both touchscreen and keyboard features, could well pull ahead of HP if the latter doesn’t make some significant tablet inroads in the next couple of quarters.

Meanwhile, Samsung is at the other end of the spectrum: its strong performance, placing it into fourth place with 11.7 million units (9% market share) is based mostly on the success of its line of Galaxy Tab tablets. It shipped 7.6 million of these in Q4, a rise of 226%.

Dell, which is hoping for a turnaround as a private company, rounded out the top five. Dell’s reputation “continues to fade,” Canalys writes, resulting in a 19% drop in shipments in the quarter. “A turnaround in fortunes is likely to take years,” they note — so just as well that Dell will not have to answer so quickly to the markets for its performance.

As other analysts have pointed out, Windows 8 has so far had little impact on worldwide PC shipments, and an almost negligible impact on tablets — with only 3% of tablets shipped in the quarter based on Windows 8.  That has had a knock-on effect both for Windows and for those who make devices using the OS. “Microsoft’s involvement in the Dell buyout raises eyebrows in the light of its recent aspirations to become a hardware vendor,” Canalys notes. “But it is not likely to solve Dell’s problems as even Microsoft struggles with pads.” Equally difficult was Windows RT, which failed to break even 1 million units at 720,000 shipped. “The outlook for Windows RT appears bleak,” noted Tim Coulling, Canalys senior analyst. He believes the only way out for this is for Microsoft to drastically reduce the licensing price, cutting further into its margins on the product.

Western Europe’s slow economy also continues to weigh things down.

Amazon, selling only tablets and no PCs (yet?), didn’t make the top five but still managed a substantial volume shift. Its shipments were 4.6 million units, almost mirroring Dell’s decline with growth of 18%. With the Kindle Fire now selling in more markets worldwide, it will be interesting to see if Amazon can see a big boost this year or if it will be stymied by Apple and Samsung. For now, international is doing a good enough job to offset some small declines in the U.S., where the launch of the higher-priced Kindle Fire HD not proving to be a runaway success as the initial launch of the Kindle Fire was a year ago.