As Dick Smith Discounts Old Style Toshiba Notebooks Concern Mounts For PC Industry

Several manufacturers believe
their future lies in the Education, SMB and Enterprise markets where
discounting is “less rampant”.

Despite
recent growth spurts PC manufacturers have failed to increase orders for 2015
however Hewlett-Packard (HP) Acer and Lenovo are all aggressively looking to
maintain their shipment volumes.

Under siege
is Toshiba, ASUS, Dell and several smaller brands who are primarily sold
online.

According to
analyst’s global demand is still weak and shipments are likely to significantly
drop after the 2015 year-end holidays.

Component
manufacturers have said that following strong September shipment aimed at the
end of year peak buying period, October and November orders have slumped as PC
manufacturers wait to see what their end of year sales look like.

Compared to
the consumer notebook market, the enterprise and SMB markets along with the
Australian education market are still reasonably strong. Acer recently
announced that they have won a two-year supply contract, estimated at $70
million from the Victorian Department of Education & Training.

Acer became
the first supplier named on the Department’s Curriculum Computer Hardware
Panel, through which schools purchase hardware devices.

The deal
will see Acer offer a range of desktop, notebook and tablet computers and
support services to Government schools throughout Victoria for the next two
years, with the option of three one-year contract extensions.

The deal
extends an already successful partnership between Acer and the Victorian Whole
of Government. Earlier this year Acer was awarded a multi-year contract to
supply up to 40,000 Acer TravelMate P466 laptops to teachers throughout the
State over the next three years.

Another
issue for PC manufacturers is Microsoft who will later this week open a new
Microsoft branded PC store in Sydney. Recently Microsoft snared a multimillion
dollar supply contract for their Surface Pro 3 and Pro 4 notebooks from private
schools. The contract was previously held by a long time PC partner of
Microsoft who is now having to compete with Microsoft for hardware sales.

After
Microsoft moved to offer Windows 10 upgrades to consumers for free, PC
manufacturers have seen no noticeable lift in sales with analysts predicting
that smartphones and wearable devices will be the main gifts for the year-end holidays,
notebooks, lacking new innovations, are unlikely to attract much in sales
except models such as the MacBook, iPad Pro and Lenovo Yoga 900 Pro.