Laptop demand down 7.2 percent this year

Analysts from DigiTimes Research predicts 2016 sales of laptops will come in 7.2 percent lower than in 2015. While the market isn't expected to grow next year, DigiTimes Research's 2017 estimate of around 146 million units implies a sales drop of just 0.2 percent. It's not as good as growth but after a couple of hard years it's nice to see a reversal in the trend.

Worldwide notebook shipments are expected to drop 7.2% on year to reach less than 150 million units in 2016 because Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade program caused many consumers to postpone their new PC purchasing plans, while Apple's late releases of its new MacBooks will be another reason for the decline. But in 2017, Digitimes Research expects the decline to be much smaller at only 0.2% with shipments coming to around 146 million units.

Although the notebook market will still be impacted by several negative factors including a lack of new innovations and the rescheduled launch of Intel's Cannonlake processors, notebook shipments in 2017 will remain flat mainly thanks to demand from the enterprise sector. Since Intel's new processors including ones using Kaby Lake architecture are no longer supporting Windows 7, more enterprises will begin adopting Windows 10 for their PC systems and will trigger replacement demand.

The full article also contains some predictions about the sales of each laptop maker. One of the interesting nuggets is that MSI is expected to enter the list of top 10 vendors in 2017, primarily because Japan-based PC makers left the laptop maker.