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A Market Research Report With Perspectives and a Topdown View of the PC Industry--Past, Present & Future Trends

Posted on: Thursday, 5 July 2007, 12:24 CDT

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c61817) has announced the addition of "Worldwide PC Market, 2007 Version" to their offering.

Worldwide PC Market Forecast Methodology

Today there is a wealth of market research data for the PC industry. The problem is not a scarcity of data, but too much data that often shows conflicting results. Data disagreements are usually caused by different definitions of product categories between different sources. It is especially difficult to compare data between different geographic regions from different research sources. The result is that there is lots of conflicting survey data and shipment estimates and it takes a major effort and knowledge to determine what is good information and what is poor data that should be discarded. The next sections explain the forecast methodology and assumptions.

The strategy of this project is to collect as much existing data as possible and use a common PC product definition across the geographic regions. A lot of time has been spent analyzing a wealth of data. The resulting forecast is an inexpensive product that has all the top-level statistics for the worldwide PC industry.

The historical part of this forecast is based on several types of information as explained below:

- Survey data from computer resellers. The survey data is especially plentiful for the U.S. market where monthly survey data of computer resellers is available since 1984. Lesser amounts of survey data are also available for the European market. This data includes PC product mix, prices and PC vendor sales information.

- PC manufacturers' annual, quarterly and federal financial fillings. These documents include product mix data, revenues by geographic regions and often contain PC shipment figures by geographic regions.

- PC manufacturers' press releases, which often list their sales, market shares, rankings, milestones and other useful information.

- Government statistics from many different countries. Useful information includes survey data that estimate how many households have PCs, number of PCs per household, future buying intentions, how many workers have PCs and so on.

- News reports and articles from the computer and business press and their websites. There is a wealth of information nuggets buried in thousands of articles.

- Research reports by Wall Street analysts. These reports often have useful shipment information.

- Internet user statistics. The recent flood of Internet user statistics is helpful in estimating the number of PCs sold and PCs-in-use.

- A personal library of computer industry statistics that goes back to the beginning of the PC industry. These statistics started with Future Computing, which was the premier PC market research company in the 1980-1986 timeframe. Future Computing collected the most PC industry statistics of any organization in the world. The data collection continued for the Computer Industry Almanac and Internet Industry Almanac. For nearly 15 years country-specific PCs-in-use and computers-in-use statistics were collected for over 50 countries. As the eight Computer Industry Almanacs and one Internet Industry Almanac were sold across the world additional data was received from some readers.

The forecast for future years is more difficult to do. However, 20 years of experience in forecasting the PC industry is helpful. The following factors were used in the forecast.

- Ultimate PC penetration estimates is a useful technique. The ultimate PC penetration rate is different for each country and region and basically depends on the wealth of each country and region. More information is shown below.

- PC sales per capita and PCs-in-use per capita are calculated to track how far the PC penetration has proceeded. Increasing PC penetration invariably slows the PC shipment growth rate.

- PC replacement rates and PC product lifetime. Existing PC owners replace their PCs at regular intervals. The replacement rates depend on the market maturity, economic conditions and the useful life of PCs. In each country and region a portion of new PC sales replace older and obsolete PCs. The forecast assumes a PC lifetime of four to five years in the industrialized countries and five to six years in the less developed countries.

- Internet market dynamics. Since the Internet has become the main driving force for PC adoption, the market dynamics of the Internet growth is a major factor in PC growth. The results from another forecast product, which estimates of the number of Internet users for the same geographic regions and 50+ specific countries, was used as a guideline.

The PC shipment forecast was developed by using three more guidelines. The first guideline is the current growth rate for each region. The second guideline is the relative maturity of each region's adoption of PCs and the Internet. The maturity is indicated by PC sales per 1,000 people, PCs-in-use per 1,000 people and Internet users per 1,000 people. Some countries have been very active in their adoption of computers and the Internet and their PC growth rates have started to drop. Other countries have limited PC penetration and are just starting to use the Internet and their growth rates will remain high.

The third guideline is the economic climate, telecommunications infrastructure and pricing, gross domestic product per capita and political and religious freedom. If the economy is poor, if the telecom network is limited or expensive and/or the average income per capita of a country is low, then the potential for PC usage and Internet usage are low because relatively few companies and few consumers can afford the cost of Internet/PC hardware and usage fees. Another important factor is the political and religious freedom in a country. If the personal freedom in a country is limited, either by politics or religion, the potential for Internet usage will be much lower than without these restrictions. Examples are Cuba and North Korea that have limited political freedom and Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and others where religious restrictions put a damper on PC adoption and Internet usage.

Areas covered:

- PC Forecast Summary

- PC Technology Trends

- Worldwide PC Forecast

- Worldwide PC Revenues

- Worldwide Shipments of Leading PC Vendors

- Forecast Methodology and Assumptions

- Forecast Spreadsheet Details

- PC Industry Resources

Companies mentioned:

- Acer

- Apple

- Compaq

- Dell

- Gateway

- Hewlett-Packard

- IBM

- Lenovo

- NEC

- Toshiba

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c61817

Source: Business Wire

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