Japan's PC Sales in Fourth Week of January Rise Sharply
February 21, 2000 (TOKYO) -- The spring sales campaign for personal computers got off to an excellent start in Japan.
Sales of PCs in the fourth week of January rose in excess of two times sales in the same week last year for all types of PCs, including desktop and notebook PCs. This is partly because the campaign started a week earlier than that in the previous year.
According to a survey conducted by GfK Japan Ltd., an information service company handling POS data from 55 mass retailers of home electronic appliances, PC sales in the fourth week of January 2000 (Jan. 24-30) at some 2,000 mass retailers rose by 25.6 percent in units and by 30.4 percent in value over the previous week. In comparison with the same week last year (Jan. 25-31, 1999), sales in terms of units rose by 120.3 percent and sales value by 104.6 percent.
The average retail price rose by 7,420 yen to 197,915 yen from 190,495 yen in the previous week to 197,915 yen. (110.03 yen = US$1)
In the 1998-1999 winter season, sales peaked in December 1998 and tapered down to level off for a week before rising again. However, this year is witnessing a sharp rebound in sales, which bottomed out in the previous week. With the increase, the turnover regained a similar volume of sales as that seen in the last week of December 1999 in terms of both units and value.
The gradual debut of spring models raised the average PC price by more than 7,000 yen from the previous week. Yet, this increase is about half of the rise seen in the first week of last spring's sales campaign, which exceeded 13,000 yen. This is mainly due to the downward trend in prices of desktop PCs. The upsurge in prices of desktop PCs was more than 10,000 yen in 1999 and is about 3,300 yen in 2000.
GfK Japan collects POS data from 55 IT-related retail sales companies centering on high-volume stores specializing in home electric appliances. It covers about 3,200 stores (as of April 1998) throughout Japan.
In cooperation with GfK Japan, Nikkei Market Access provides weekly reports of PC sales in volume and value.
The sales data has been based on the same 41 companies (with about 2,000 stores) since April 1996.
The number of PCs sold at the 2,000 stores is estimated to comprise about 10 percent of gross domestic shipments, and when limiting the sales to retail sales channel, the share is about 25 percent of such shipments.
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