Japanese Weekly PC Sales Drop 50 Percent after Golden Week
June 4, 2001 (TOKYO) -- During the second week of May 2001 (May 7-13, 2001), Japanese sales of both desktop and notebook PCs fell more than 50 percent from the previous week.
PC sales decreased 52.9 percent in volume and 53.8 percent in value from the previous week. Compared to the same period last year (May 8-14, 2000), the sales increased 2.9 percent in volume and 1.6 percent in value. The average sales price dropped by 3,677 yen to 183,652 yen from 187,329 yen in the previous week. (118.78 yen = US$1)
The statistics are based on the survey conducted by GfK Japan Ltd., an information service company that handles POS data of 3,200 large-volume retail stores of home appliances.
In the first week of May 2001, sales were strong after a long interval, showing a 10 percent increase or more over the same week of last year, but the sales in the second week of May shrank to the same level as the year-ago period. It seems the peak of the spring selling season have passed, while some retail stores are still holding stocks, except some hit products.
Retailers started to sell new models for this summer from May 31 and later, according to the release of Microsoft's new package software, Office XP. During the two weeks before the new lineups came up on the shelves, retailers cut back on prices of the spring models to reduce their stockpiles, and the average sales price started to fall accordingly.
Table: PC Sales in the Second Week of May 2001 (GfK Japan survey) Comparison with the same week a year ago (May 8-14, 2000)
Total
Desktop PC
Notebook PC
Week-on-week comparison
Year-before weekly comparison
Week-on-week comparison
Year-before weekly comparison
Week-on-week comparison
Year-before weekly comparison
Volume
-52.9%
+2.9%
-53.4%
-14.5%
-52.3%
+23.6%
Value
-53.8%
+1.6%
-54.9%
-7.0%
-53.0%
+8.6%
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(Shinya Sakaki, Nikkei Market Access) |
