Common Paradox Tech Blog

Market researcher Gartner is making the call: the six-year decline in PC prices will come to an end later this year, so get ready to pay more. The culprit: a shortage of components.

Manufacturers are facing two problems. Problem one: with prices falling (and the economy crashing), manufacturers have been scaling back on production, resulting in a shortage. Problem two: manufacturers are in the process of ramping up new production lines, and aren’t yet able to meet current demand.

A perfect example is memory. DRAM manufacturers are shedding DDR2 capacity and adding DDR3 capacity. This results in shortages in both, as DDR2 demands are going unheeded, while DDR3 demands are going unsatisfied. Memory makes up about ten percent of the overall cost of a PC, which makes significant the recent 23 percent jump in DDR3 spot prices.

Also in short supply: LCDs and hard drives, with prices for each expected to jump 20 percent. Optical drives are also getting harder to come by.

OEMs can absorb some of these cost increases, but with margins as thin as they are they can’t absorb them all. Some will be passed along to the consumer. How much remains to be seen.

Image Credit: MyrtleBeachBob/Flickr

The explosion of mini-notes (netbooks) this past year has been a bitter-sweet pill for notebook manufacturers to swallow. On the one hand, PC makers will take revenue wherever they can get it, and the volume growth looks good to investors. But the profit margins aren’t as attractive on low-cost netbooks as they are on pricier notebooks, and as netbook shipments grow, notebook revenue declines, according to a new report by DisplaySearch.

Netbook revenue surged 37 percent in in the third quarter, and a staggering 264 percent in year-on-year. But while consumers are gobbling up low powered, low price mini-notes, few buyers seem interested in larger notebooks anymore, a segment in which revenue was down in every quarter for the past year.

"Mini-notes have been a significant contributor to volume growth in the portable PC market as their very attractive price points make owning a secondary computer viable for many consumers. However, the lower ASPs of these devices are clearly having a negative impact on portable PC market revenue," said John F. Jacobs, Director of Notebook Market Research.

DisplaySearch said it expects this trend to continue well into next year, with mini-notes predicted to account for 21.5 percent of shipment volume but just 10.9 percent of total revenue for the portable PC market in 2010.

TC50 DemoPit company AskYourTargetMarket is hoping to simplify market research for businesses and solutions by offering a comprehensive platform where businesses can both create and deploy surveys. Since the site is in closed beta, AskYourTargetMarket has offered 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. Each invite comes with a free survey package for up to 50 respondents; enter the beta code “TC50-2009″ here.

The site lets you define your target market demographic, then write a survey to distribute to focus groups. Because you are able to target a particular group, you don’t have to waste space on your survey with demographic questions. Once your survey is finalized, AskYourTargetMarket will launch it to your desired demographic within their consumer panel for as little as $29.95 for 50 respondents. The site, which says it has thousands of U.S. consumers on their survey panel, draws its respondents from its sister site, InstantCashSweepstakes.com, which offers users a cash prize incentive for filling out surveys.