Worldwide as per recent trends in sales and market analysis reports from sources like Gartner, the inference has been that PC and laptop sales slowly have been facing a decline, as a result of the demand shifting towards tablets. Although in an overall financial year, tablets have still not beaten laptops in sales, yet the trend surely brings us to the crossroads on: Whether the days of the laptop are numbered and is the laptop market facing its worst crisis ever?
Laptop Market Today
The answer would be in the negative still however. While laptop sales might be displaying a dwindling count globally in a few quarters, still for the bulk share of emerging markets, laptops still stay the computing devices of choice. Markets which are seeing a constant evolution of smart businesses at even the grassroot levels, and markets wherein education, healthcare are slowly booming are also the markets which would see more PC and laptop sales. These would be markets wherein the consumers will seek to find out which laptop suits his/her needs optimally.
Suggested Reading: Netbooks vs. Laptops: Which is Right for You?
Therefore at FindYogi we have collated the data specific to a buyer’s needs and consolidated it at a market level report for the laptop market.
The laptop market report for the buyer is based upon the basic parameters that a buyer in an emerging or even an established market would utilize to shortlist the best product for his/her unique needs, namely:
- Price
- Number of options available from the brands.
- Features
Key Takeaways:
1. Number of options and the price range of production
The market in any category of shopping is defined by the number of options that a manufacturer has out as a potential buy for the consumer. If recent brand rankings are anything to go by HP laptops have been the market leader when it comes to laptops. In terms of number of options too HP stands at the top of the table which seems to be in line with its observed market approach strategy of reaching out to most market needs. In a similar positioning but with lesser number of option are the Lenovo laptops.
Sony and Apple laptops cater to specific target audiences, because of which the number of options and their positioning is very exclusive and in most cases premium as well. Other brands like Acer, Asus and Dell cater with a medium range of options which is in line with their strategy of hitting the target sections which appear attractive for a larger part of the market.
A buyer classifies his/her buy into a price need as a cheaper buy, a medium range buy or a high budget buy. As such it is worth noting the number of options that the brands offer in different price ranges.
Most manufacturers make it a point to provide options across all the three price segments, albeit in different product-price mixes. But Apple as is the case with almost all its product lines, goes only for a premium positioning with its laptops available in a high price segment alone. Sony too tries to follow a similar approach but goes with a mixed positioning which also has a number of laptops in the medium price segment
2. Features and number of options
Features of the laptops including its RAM, hard disk capacity, processor, graphics card option etc, form a second major criteria for buyers. Based on a scoring of the laptops as per their features, the FindYogi feature score helps in determining an aggregate score representative of the features that the laptop carries.
Based on the data consolidated with a trend line centred around three feature score ranges of less than 50, between 50-79 and above 80, an observation that stands out is that none of the brands manufacture laptops which are in a less than well featured segment of below 50 score.
However only Apple has substantial laptops in the most premium featured segments as well as in the well featured laptops. Sony features most of its laptops in the well featured segments alongwith Dell laptops which too follow a similar pattern except for a few ultra featured laptops like its Alienware range.
Based on these findings a buyer can take help of a best options map to seek out the brand that best fits his/her needs.
3. The Best Options Map
The above map is a self explanatory map which defines the best brands to go for within a price and features mix which has been derived from the price-options distribution chart and features-options distribution chart for the various brands. The highlighted areas within the map indicate the best buy brands for the particular budget and features segment.
Data Disclosure: The above derivations have been made utilizing data relative to the features, prices of laptops from the brands Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Apple and Sony which includes 568 laptops which are in the market currently.