Japanese PC Sales Continue to Fall Due to Seasonal Model Changes
February 13, 2001 (TOKYO) -- Sales of PCs in Japan in the third week of January dropped for the second straight week.
Also, the retail price of desktop PCs for the third week of January declined below the figure of the same week a year ago for two consecutive weeks.
According to GfK Japan Ltd., an information company dealing with POS data collected from 3,200 volume retailers of household electric appliances, sales of PCs in the third week of January 2001 (Jan. 15-21) decreased by 15.1 percent in volume and by 14.7 percent in value from the previous week. Compared with the same week of last year (Jan. 17-23, 2000), the total sales increased by 14.3 percent in volume and 6.7 percent in value. The average retail price of PCs increased by 957 yen to 177,596 yen from 176,639 yen the previous week. (116.08 yen = US$1)
Retailers have begun to make seasonal changes to their as the spring is coming near. These spring models feature improved HDDs and main memory in terms of capacity and higher clock speeds for microprocessors. They also have drives good for both CD-RW and DVD-ROM. Also, high-end desktop PCs feature a wide LCD display of 1,280 x 768 dots, which shows the full TV screen size. The spring model of 2000 appeared one or two weeks earlier than 1999, but that of 2001 is the same timing as 2000. Therefore, sales of PCs in the fourth week of January is expected to increase as opposed to the decreasing trend seen in these two weeks.
Table: PC Sales in the Third Week of Jan. 2001 (GfK Japan survey) Comparison with the same week a year ago (Jan. 17-23, 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
-15.1%
+14.3%
-15.0%
+2.2%
-15.2%
+28.6%
Value
-14.7%
+6.7%
-15.2%
-1.0%
-14.2%
+13.2%
Previous report:
Japanese PC Sales in the Second Week of January Fall to Half of Prior Week Level
(Nikkei Market Access)
Subject 50522 |
