Few companies can disrupt an entire industry with a single product launch, but Apple Inc, whose history is filled with such game-changing moments, has done it again with its iPad tablet.
Apple’s iPad has rattled the technology world by causing many consumers to think twice about buying new personal computers, two market-research firms reported on Wednesday.
That hesitation was one reason worldwide shipments of new PCs stumbled in the third quarter, growing more slowly than research firms IDC and Gartner Inc had anticipated.
The other major factor was consumers’ dreary outlook on the economy, especially in the US and Europe, which has led them to pinch pennies more, pay off debts and spend less on PCs and other kinds of electronics products.
Gartner said PC makers shipped more than 88.3 million machines in the third quarter, an increase of 7.6 percent over last year.
Gartner was expecting a 12.7 percent rise.
IDC put the third-quarter number at 89.3 million, a 10.5 percent increase, which was 3 percentage points below what it expected.
Both companies blamed economic anxieties for depressing sales, and each had its own take on the iPad’s effect.
“Hype around devices such as the iPad has also affected consumer notebook growth by delaying some PC purchases, especially in the US consumer market,” Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said.
“Media tablets don’t replace primary PCs, but they affect PC purchases in many ways,” Kitagawa said.
So far, Kitagawa said, hype around media tablets has led consumers to take a wait-and-see approach to computer purchases.
Bob O’Donnell, an IDC vice president, said the iPad was hurting sales of netbooks — small, inexpensive laptops.
“The halo effect of the device also helped propel Mac sales and moved the company into the number three position in the US market,” O’Donnell said.
Both companies kept Hewlett-Packard Co as the world’s No. 1 PC maker, with more than 17 percent of the market. They said Taiwan’s Acer Inc (宏碁) was No. 2 with roughly 13 percent of the market and Dell Inc was No. 3 with about 12 percent.
For the US, IDC named HP, Dell and Apple the top three PC makers. Gartner’s data showed Apple at No. 4, behind HP, Dell and Acer in US sales.
Gartner said HP suffered a 20 percent decline in shipments in Asia as the company jettisoned less-profitable deals in the region.
Finding ways to grow profitably is a tall order in the PC industry, which is characterized by competitive pricing and a trend toward commoditization that hurts nearly every computer maker. The exception is Apple, which has ridden to a US$274 billion market value, second only to Exxon Mobil Corp in the US.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
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