Anyone who has bought a computer knows the feeling: That new purchase is barely set up on your office table when a better model is offered up for less money.
The days of near instant obsolescence may be coming to an end, though -- at least for a while. Many computer experts believe that prices for PCs and laptops will rise significantly in the coming days.
Analysts at Gartner, a US-based technology market research institute, are figuring on a price increase of between 10 and 15 percent in the near term. "I see that as entirely realistic," confirms Christian Persson, chief editor at the computer industry magazine c't.
Apple hiked the prices of its computers at the end of March. The California-based firm raised prices for the new iMac models worldwide by approximately US$100.
Price labels for Fujitsu computers will also have to be redone in the near future, explained the firm's press spokesman Barbara Schaedler.
"We will make price increases of around two to three per cent for standard PCs, although for laptops it will be a bit lower," said Schaedler.
A Sony Deutschland spokesman said that the firm would orient its prices to the market.
These trends come after a year in which PCs and laptops became significantly cheaper, Gartner experts indicate. The reason for the current hikes centre on higher costs for computer components. The price of memory chips has almost tripled since December 2001, with those for flat-screen displays growing between 25 and 35 percent, Garnter analysts Leslie Fiering and Brian Gammage report.
Increased demand has been the reason most frequently cited for the price hikes, although the computer component prices has proven to be cyclical.
A spokesman for German chip manufacturer Infineon confirms this trend. The price of a chip with 128MB of storage space went for around a dollar during the technology crisis at the end of last year. Since then the price has jumped by more than 400 percent.
Computer buyers will need to be particularly careful, Persson claims. In order to hide the price increases, many manufacturers will rework their package deals to include cheaper components like hard drives with less storage space or simpler graphics cards. "There are always ways to work around the price pressures other than by just raising the price," Persson says.
The experts and the manufacturers both agree on one thing: There will be no additional profits wrung out of either price increases or cheaper components. The manufacturers have little choice but to pass the price increases on to consumers, Gartner's experts claim.
No one can afford to fall behind in the development of chips or flat-display screens, Persson, Schaedler, and Albrecht all confirm.
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