Laptops more popular than desktop PCs

MONTREAL—For the first time, laptop shipments to both consumer and business markets accounted for more than half of sales in a quarter, toppling desktop computers from their traditional top spot.
“What you have is massive numbers of students going back to school and they tend to shift the market one way or another, and they shifted enormously toward laptops as they went back to school,” said David Daoud an analyst with global market intelligence firm, IDC.

The share of notebooks shipped in the U.S. to consumer and business markets was 55.2 percent in the fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, more than 9.5 million units, according to IDC research.
The shift to laptops in the United States would also apply to Canada, said Daoud, research manager of U.S. Quarterly PC Tracker and Personal Systems at IDC in Framingham, Mass.
Convenience and the ability to move around with the laptop are driving its popularity.
“There is a trend to mobility, no doubt,” Daoud said.
“There’s a lot more innovation happening, a lot more research and development money spent on mobility than on desktops.”
He noted wireless connections to the Internet at Wi-Fi hotspots have made web connections through mobile devices faster and better.
Entertainment is also a factor in the laptop’s popularity.
“A lot of people use the laptop for DVD viewing in bed rather than watching in the living room with their parents. . . . It has an entertainment usage, whereas the desktop forces you to go to the desk and sit down in an uncomfortable position.”
“So mobility is where you take your stuff with you,” Daoud said.
Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PCMag Network, said the shift to portable computing devices has been going on for the better part of this decade but has picked up the pace in recent years.
“As prices have dropped and power has increased, they have become a better and better alternative to people looking for computing of any kind,” he says from New York.
Businesses like laptops because they can get more out of their employees, Ulanoff said.
There is a downside because laptops may have to be replaced more often if they are lost or stolen and data can be lost along with the machine, he said.
“But the balance is you get so much more out of your employees who can not only work more, but can quickly hop onto your virtual network and fix problems that might exist in a much more timely manner.”