Analyst lowers expectations of notebooks due to netbook sales
A financial analyst covering the tech sector, Vijay Rakesh of ThinkPanmure, has lowered his recommendations of Apple and Intel due to infringement of the notebook market by the low-margin netbooks.
“We believe the netbook market is starting to make inroads into thecore notebook market as a more price-conscious consumer opts for thecheaper alternative,” he wrote in his Intel note this morning. Intel isaddressing the netbook market with its Atom processor, so the companyis not being cut out of the food chain; but Rakesh notes that Atomprocessors sell at much lower price points and carry thinner grossmargins. The Atom, he notes, sells for $20-$40 and carries a 45% grossmargin, while the Core2Duo sells for $140-$250 and carries a grossmargin of 56%.
We have stated on jkOnTheRun that the low price of netbooks make them almost an impulse buy which appeals to the mainstream consumer. This market segment is the largest by far, much larger than the typical geek notebook set. Netbook manufacturers are quick to state that netbooks make good secondary computers but that’s not how we believe mainstream consumers see them. The average consumer just wants a simple computer in the home that lets them do the typical things they do on the computer, check email, browse the web and maybe do some light document work. These are the tasks that the netbook excels at performing and consumers are discovering this in droves.
It makes much greater sense to them to spend a few hundred dollars on a netbook rather than get a desktop or notebook computer for a much higher price, even if it is not as fully functional. Let’s face it, most folks don’t want to edit video or other technical tasks and netbooks are fine for what people actually do most of the time. As more consumers discover this new genre of cheap netbooks the greater number of potential notebook sales will be lost and this is what the analyst is predicting will happen.
(via Barron’s)
Its hard to imagine netbooks taking too much share away from Apple’s market, because most do not buy into the Apple thing because of price but for other reasons.
I’d expect Hp,Dell,Sony and others to see a greater share of the margin erosion.
I bought my 702 8G and my 1000H as toys even though they are more capable.
I love my netbook. Perfect size for my motorcycle. I use it for navigation and texting while on the move with my one liter superbike. I think notebooks overtook desktop sales way back in 2002. Hopefully netbooks will overtake notebooks with two years if they can keep price point low. I agree that low price attracts a completely new type of customer and a much larger sales potential. Thank goodness for those visionaries at ASUS for cracking open this new market to the masses.
Maybe the “brick” is Apple’s netbook… now that the market segment has proven itself its ripe for Apple to move in. I’ll take a multi-touch track pad please.
Margins are worthless if you’re not moving volume, and Apple helped open the door to this one, too.
By releasing the MacBook Air, they brought a lot of hoopla to an old idea: People like their portable computers to be light and *portable,* and compromises along the way are acceptable.
(What they got wrong was the “small” part of the equation, as well as the “affordable” bit, but Apple’s PR machine basically got people to look at ultralights where they might normally ignore them entirely in favor of a more powerful desktop replacement.)
At the end of the day, this all backfired on Apple, since the MBA is, for all intents and purposes, too much computer for too much money, but once you’re poking around, why not look at other compromises, and get an Eee, or a Wind, or an HP Mini-Note? Hell, why not buy one for the kids, and another to keep near the couch? All your data’s in the cloud anyway, it’s not like you need to worry about which one they use, and they’re just so cheap that it makes a strange sort of sense.
I don’t think that the margin argument is going to fly in the long run, when families start buying two netbooks for less than the price of one notebook. I see notebooks as becoming more and more of a business-class solution for people who need gobs of power in a mostly-portable setup, while netbooks become the “just enough” solution for people who have a main desktop/home server, but need to get to *something* on the go.