Netbooks Are 20 Percent of Laptop Market

By Marcus Yam
published

Did you contribute to the rise of netbooks? So did a bunch of other people.

According to early data from DisplaySearch, netbooks accounted for nearly 20 percent of all worldwide laptop sales with 6 million units in the first quarter 2009.

Acer with its Aspire One line is the top selling brand with a market share of 30.5 percent, doubling the shipping numbers of Asus’ Eee PCs.

45 percent of netbook shipments went to Europe, Middle-East and Africa, while the North America only swallowed up 26 percent.

A year ago, netbooks were less than 3 percent of the laptop market. The rapid growth could be attributed to greater selection and availability along with consumers being more cost conscious. DisplaySearch also believes that telecom company subsidies for signing mobile broadband contracts have a part to play as well.

“It is clear at the moment that mini-notes play a vital role in the total PC market. Without the additional volume provided by these products, shipment volumes for the notebook PC market would have been down 19% Y/Y, instead of only falling 3%. While there is no doubt that many buyers of mini-notes would have chosen larger notebook PCs if mini-notes were not available, it is also certain that many buyers might have chosen not to purchase a notebook PC at all,” said John F. Jacobs, Director of Notebook Market Research and author of the report.

Did you buy a netbook within the last six months? If not, do you have any plans to?

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
27 Comments Comment from the forums
  • deltatux
    Netbooks are useless for the enthusiast and some laptop users because they are either too small or the power of the processor is insufficient. I can't do programming with a tiny screen. My 13" Macbook is just about right for programming as it is.
    Reply
  • war2k9
    Netbook is great for passing time in coffee shop. It is cheap and does more than most smart phone.
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    Cheap, light, portable. As long as i don't plan on doing more then surfing the web, im chatting, and writing a word doc or two i have no issue with it, i find them great as a school laptop i don't need them to play movies i have my desktop for that but i think some can do that just fine with an dvd drive attachment when needed :)
    Reply
  • war2k9
    Yes I do own one
    Reply
  • hallic7
    “It is clear at the moment that mini-notes play a vital role in the total PC market"

    Haha I remember some news where mac said that they will never build netbooks because it was not worth it. Another stupid argument from mac demonstrated here!

    It's obvious that a netbook is for basic needs... It would be silly to blame my phone (which I bough to make calls) because it does not has the power to do programming LOL.

    You should get what you need, if you buy something with this out of mind, don't blame the device when it does not fits your necessity (after all is your fault for not checking out)!
    Reply
  • AdamB5000
    I guess I don't have one because I don't see the need for one. I assumed they sold well because of cost.

    I got a good look at one in Best Buy and I couldn't believe how small the screen and keyboard were. I couldn't imaging doing any type of work on it. I guess it's exactly what it's called - a netbook, or a notebook made solely for browsing the 'net. Doing any sort of productive work on a screen that small seems like it'd be extremely difficult.

    I have a 15" notebook and I couldn't imaging going any smaller.
    Reply
  • AdamB5000
    *imagine - not imaging.

    Is there an edit feature here?
    Reply
  • dainsane1
    bought the asus 701 over a year ago.
    thing is great. just what i need.

    it is used mostly for work. am nomadic tech support. i don't need alot of power just something more versatile then my axim. primary uses are remote desktop, e-mail and web.

    the little 2 pounder (celeron 8G SSD) replaced a 10 pound p2 with a 6Gig drive. it's not a primary system and never was meant to be one. before this i was eyeing up some ultra portable that was going to cost 1k for a used one. Cheap, light, small; Sold.
    Reply
  • ahmshaegar
    @hallic: No, Apple understands what they want to do very well. Making a netbook would be stupid for Apple. Once you make a cheap product, it's very hard to (over)charge or raise your prices again.

    Remember, a lot of other computer makers sell computers with razor thin profit margins. Apple doesn't sell any product with razor thin profit margins. The netbook, by definition, is a product with almost no profit margins.
    Reply
  • I love netbooks simply because of their size and what they can do given their size. Problem is that I already have a 15.6" HP and a 14" and a 17" Dell, somewhere among all those different sizes I have every possible portable need covered. I'm not totally crazy I bought the HP when the 17" Dell video card went bad because the it only cost 100 bucks more for the whole machine and I needed something more portable. Then the 14" Dell was given to me and was only lacking a power brick and memory.

    So what all that rambling comes down is I want to buy one cus they are neat little toys but without a really good use for one I will get shot if I buy another cool toy.
    Reply