Hudl Accessories 4

Mini-laptop sales are booming, luring consumers from more costly standard notebooks and drivingdown overall prices, a researching the market firm said accessories for hudl Thursday.

According to the NPD Group, Mini-laptops, also called netbooks, taken into account most theincrease in overall mobile PC shipments to Usa retailers in December. The number of laptopsshipped rose 23% to 1.9 million units, with 14% of the growth attributable to mini-notebooks

Foryourfullyear, accessories for hudl shipments grew by 21%. Without netbooks, that number would have fallen to16%, the studies firm said.

Most mini-laptop sales happened in the second half of year. From the first half, the small systems,that have displays of 10 inches or less and are priced less than standard laptops, accounted for lessthan 1% of hudl accessories sales. Inside the third quarter that number rose to 2%, so netbooks'biggest impact happened in Hudl Accessories the 4th quarter, once the systems started reachingretailers' shelves in large numbers, NPD said.

Netbookstakenintoaccount12% of shipments, and nearly 50% of netbook sales at retailers to the year occurred within the lastmonth of the year by December.

The impact in the low-cost systems in the average selling price of laptops was significant, NPD said.In January 2008, hudl accessories ASPs were $861. That number had fallen to $740 by December.Without the price erosion brought on by mini-notebooks, the ASP could have fallen far less, to $795.

The sales percentages tesco tablet of mini-laptops indicate that systems are drawing sales far fromstandard laptops. NPD analyst Stephen Baker estimates that about 50% of all December netbooksales were "cannibalistic."

Many consumers buying netbooks, however, do not know the things they are becoming, an NPDsurvey found. From the 25% of clients who said they might purchase a hudl accessories over thefollowing year, 70% said a netbook sounded just like a good alternative.

Generally speaking, mini-laptops are slower and much less powerful than standard systems and areideal for browsing the net and checking e-mail on the streets. The lightweight systems with smallkeyboards make many tasks, including document and spreadsheet creation, difficult.

With such a large proportion of potential hudl accessories buyers seeing netbooks as a replacementas opposed to as being a second, more portable notebook, the PC industry could see cannibalizationof standard laptop sales occur quickly, Baker said.

"Latestfeaturesalreadyarebeingintroducedwhichcouldblur thefishinglinebetweennetbooks andlaptopsmore,"Bakersaid."Thenetbook market is being redefined before it's been fine-tuned, and that could cause much moreconsumer confusion."

Indeed, computer makers already are starting to alter the concept of netbooks. Hewlett-Packard, asan example, is edging its Mini system toward business use with larger and faster hardrives, morememory, and other features. With the added features comes a bigger price of from $499 to about$1,000.

Sony,however,ishopingGPSand

also other features it packs in its new 8-inch Vaio P Serieshttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tesco.grocery.view Lifestyle PC will likely beattractive enough to convince customers to spend about $900, far more than an average netbook.The device is scheduled for availability in the United States the following month.