Although Apple Inc’s products have not always sold well, there has been much discussion over the past year about the impact of the iPad tablet on the PC industry, and last week a Digitimes analyst referred to this phenomenon an “Apple shock” to the market.
Joanne Chien (簡佩萍), a senior analyst with Digitimes Research, said in a report released on Friday, two days after the death of Apple’s former chief executive Steve Jobs, that the Apple shock has had three major effects on the PC market.
The first effect is that combined shipments of Apple’s iPad tablets and MacBook Air ultra-light notebooks have outpaced other brandname vendors’ combined sales of tablets and laptops this year, Taipei-based Chien said.
Based on Digitimes Research’s estimates, Apple would have shipped 52.7 million units of mobile computing devices (tablet PCs and laptops together) by the end of this month. That would be more than Hewlett-Packard Co’s 37.2 million units, Lenovo Group Ltd’s (聯想) 28.8 million units, Acer Inc’s (宏碁) 27.7 million units and Dell Inc’s 24.6 million units, the researcher said.
The second effect of the Apple shock has had a particularly large impact on the notebook PC industry, Chien said.
On top of weak consumer demand because of the global economic downturn, cannibalization by the iPad was likely to result in a global contraction of notebook shipments of 0.3 percent this year from last year, she said.
Chien’s forecast for shipment growth was much more pessimistic than that of her peers at International Data Corp (IDC).
On Sept. 13, the US market researcher revised downward its forecast for growth in global notebook shipments to 4.9 percent to 211 million units this year, from its June forecast of a 6.7 percent increase to 214.6 million units.
IDC attributed its downward revision to cautious spending by consumers, slowing demand in mature markets and budget squeeze from tablet devices.
The third effect of the Apple shock has been the weakening influence of the Wintel duopoly (referring to Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and Intel Corp’s processors) on the PC industry, as well as the transformation of PC vendors and supply-chain makers to better compete with Apple, Chien’s report said.
The Digitimes report said the Apple impact would ensure the PC industry remains in “continuous turmoil,” and it has not been alone in addressing this matter.
An IHS iSuppli analysis last week said that many original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and original design manufacturers (ODM) in the PC industry would face “a challenging dilemma” when forced to adjust their product roadmaps and research, as well as reallocate manufacturing resources to respond to the “tremendous growth potential” of tablets.
In the report released on Thursday, iSuppli forecast that global tablet shipments would likely rise above 60 million units this year, with Apple accounting for 73.6 percent of the market, followed by Samsung Electronics Co’s with 6.7 percent, HTC Corp (宏達電) with 3 percent, Motorola Mobility 2.7 percent and Research In Motion Ltd 2.5 percent.
However, expanding tablet orders from Apple and other Android tablet venders means only meager margins for mobile PC ODMs such as Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) and Wistron Corp (緯創), iSuppli said.
Nonetheless, despite difficult years ahead, notebook ODMs are expected to enter an “upgrade cycle” next year thanks to the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, the industry’s migration to cloud-computing platform and the launch of Ultrabooks, a Goldman Sachs report said.
As Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 will also debut in the second half of next year, how soon ultrabooks become mainstream products will depend on how quickly costs fall relative to other mobile devices.
“We expect another upgrade cycle starting in late 2012, with growth expanding in 2013,” Goldman Sachs said in its latest research report late last month.
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