Throughout 2013 notebook manufacturers saw weakening demand for notebooks. Heading into the holiday season, however, there was still some optimism that a combination of Microsoft’s improved Windows 8.1 OS and new product features (touchscreens chief among them) would propel holiday sales of notebooks.
Now it seems that the tablet market is still taking a big bite out of notebook sales, even during the holiday months when consumers spend the most money on tech.
DigiTimes Research today released a new estimate for December notebook shipments. It shows that notebook shipments fell 11% month-over-month during the last month of the year. This is coming off of November, which also saw a 12% drop in shipments from October 2013.
Though the numbers show a continually weakening notebook market, the shipment drop in December wasn’t quite as low as DigiTimes had predicted. Toshiba and Dell were found to have the best shipment growth during December, while HP notebook shipments fell 15% from those seen in November.
According to DigiTimes, much of Dell’s shipment growth was led by notebooks sold to replace those that are still running Windows XP. Microsoft announced last year that it will stop supporting Windows XP in April of 2014. With XP still one of the most popular operating systems in the world, Microsoft and OEM manufacturers are now looking for a sales boost to PCs and notebooks from companies that have waited until the last minute to upgrade.