Acer has revealed predictions that
netbook sales will account for 25 per cent of the
laptop PC market by 2010. Acer’s chairman J. T. Wang claimed that sales of
netbooks would reach 50 million in 2010, representing a much faster growth than many analysts had forecast. Gartner had predicted that netbook
computer sales would total 21 million this year, though
Acer believe that figure to be an extremely modest prediction, instead believing that global shipments will reach between 25 and 30 million this year.
Either way, the prediction of 50 million netbook sales in 2010 assumes a massive growth in the next 12 months, a growth with J. T. Wang believes will be sparked by consumers desire for cheaper
PCs . Although Gartner’s forecast suggests that it will take until 2012 for netbook sales to reach 50 million, Acer believes netbook sales will account for 1 in 4
notebooks by next year. That prediction suggests that many features of powerful
laptops and
desktops, such as an
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, large Ram size, a large screen and numerous ports, are superfluous to laptop users’ needs.
If Acer’s predictions prove to be right, profit margins at
hardware manufacturers could be hit hard, whilst
Microsoft could also struggle to convince users to pay for an upgrade to Vista or
Windows 7 .