Vista Sales Lift: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
|
PC sales rose the week of Windows Vista's launch, but the increase--bolstered by low inventory--won't last. |
Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, said he expected PC sales to return to normal levels within a couple weeks at most.
"We expect sales growth to be about what they were before the holidays," Baker said.
PC desktop sales jumped about 67 percent year over year the week of Windows Vista's launch, largely lifted by unseasonably slow sales in the previous weeks. Baker attributed much of the sales lift to empty shelves, as most retailers had few Windows XP PCs to sell. He praised the channel for managing inventory levels ahead of Vista's launch.
Only about 15 percent of retail PC sales ahead of the holidays carried standard Windows XP. Most computers packed Windows XP Media Center Edition, which still sold after Vista's launch. During the first week, ended Feb. 3, 4 percent of PCs sold at retail had the Media Center operating system.
Notebook PC sales shot up 119 percent year over year, the week of Vista's launch. But the lift partly reflects an overall surge in the category. The increase week over week wasn't much higher than for desktop PCs, 188 percent compared with 181 percent, according to NPD.
Vista had no perceptible impact on ASPs (average selling prices). In fact, what had a larger impact was the holidays. The lowest ASPs for desktops or notebooks since the holiday selling season started were $624 and $701, respectively, on Nov. 25. Desktop PC prices actually fell about $8, to $745, during Vista's launch week compared with the previous week. Notebook ASPs rose about $2, according to NPD.
The Vista sales mix heavily favored Premium, particularly for notebooks, where the operating system accounted for nearly 71 percent of the SKU mix. Windows Vista Ultimate was nearly a no-show, accounting for less than 1 percent of PC SKU sales, according to NPD.
Baker speculated that Ultimate box sales could be much better. If so, OEMs might increase Ultimate preinstalls. However, Baker emphasized that he didn't expect "much difference" in Ultimate's retail SKU percentage in future sales as compared to those from the first week.
Overall, PC sales will soon return to seasonable levels as the pent-up demand created by the short-term inventory shortage passes by, he emphasized.
Comments (3)
Joe Wilcox
Very impressive figures etc.
Just one thing where are the sales firgures for Windows XP so as to make a proper comparison ?
Do you really think that the retailers are going to go through their ENTIRE inventory and change over the OS to Vista ?
No they are going sell them with what they came with when the reatiler bought them in early january (or even earlier).
There is an old saying "There are three types of lies .... lies, damn lies and ... Statistics !"
It is far too early for this sort of thing, I wouldn't be making my mind up how sales are going for at least a month.
Mind you these "so called" statistics of yours play right into your hands don't they Joe, ever since you got here you have biased and you STILL are ! You are just trying to use these "figures" to drum up "bad press" and you know it !
I like I have said before STOP trying to make the news, and start reporting some actual news!
I know about statistics because I use them myself and you know darn well that it is way too early for a representative sample.
It may work out as you say, BUT, right now B*** S*** Joe !
Posted by Neil | February 12, 2007 7:42 PM
Neil wrote: "Where are the sales firgures for Windows XP so as to make a proper comparison?"
Here:
NPD's sales figures for Windows XP: About 4 percent XP Media Center and 1.1 percent other XP versions. Another 1.2 percent went to Macs. The remaining 93.7 percent went to Windows Vista, which is another validation of NPD's conclusions about channel inventory.
Thanks,
Joe
Posted by Joe | February 12, 2007 10:17 PM
Just to prove the saying about "lies, damn lies & statistics here is a piece of inforamtion from an item on cnet.com "More buyers home in on Office 2007".
near the bottom is this statement "Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by NPD Group, the original version of this story misidentified the sales period focused on by researchers and mischaracterized first-week sales results for Office 2007 and Office 2003."
Are you still confident about all the statistics that you quote Joe, as they are from the same people mate !
They got it wrong !
Here is another one for you "figures don't lie...but liars can figure!"
Like I said originally you need MORE DATA and a LONGER TIME FRAME, before you can make the judgements that you have.
IT'S TOO EARLY !
And next time don't just quote ONE SOURCE, as accidents do happpen, don't they !!
Posted by Neil | February 13, 2007 5:53 PM