Mixed Year In Pc Market

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday April 8, 1996

SUE LOWE

DURING 1995, the average home-office PC buyer spent between $2,500 and $3,000 on an Intel 486 DX2 or DX4 machine and contributed to annual spending on home-office equipment, including PCs and printers, of $196.9 million. Average PC unit prices rose significantly during 1995.

The figures, released by Compaq last week, were based on a survey of Australia's top retailers. Purchasing of Intel 486 DX2 and DX4-based PCs peaked mid-year, with 62 per cent of units being based on the DX4 in May and June. By the end of the year, however, DX4 sales had declined to only 36 per cent of the total with 50 per cent of buyers choosing a Pentium-based PC. Sales of Apple 680X0 Macintosh machines declined gradually from 11.6 per cent of the total to 6.3 per cent by the year end.

In line with the move from DX4 to Pentium, average unit prices increased during the year. In November-December 1994, 30 per cent of units sold for between $2,000 and $2,500 and 35 per cent sold for $2,500 to $3,000. For the same period in '95, however, the $2,000 to $2,500 price bracket represented only 14 per cent of sales. Thirty per cent of sales were in the $2,500 to $3,000 bracket, 24 per cent were in the $3,000 to $3,500 bracket and 21 per cent in the $3,500 to $4,000 bracket.

The increased price of units was not, however, reflected in overall revenue growth for the industry, indicating a significant decline in unit sales towards the end of the year.

While the value of overall sales had grown almost 60 per cent on the previous year in the May-June period, overall growth was down to less than 20 per cent by the year end. PC sales for the November-December period actually declined by just over 8 per cent in that period, compared to slight increase in printer sales for the same period.

A surprising result was that the average unit price for portable computers remained below the average desktop price for most of the year. The average portable computer price caught up with and even overtook desktop prices in two isolated periods - July-August and November-December.

To make-up for the slow-down in PC sales during late 95, Compaq also announced a move into the PC accessories market with an innovative keyboard-cum-scanner device. The Scanner Keyboard costs $600 and combines a 200x400 dot per inch monochrome scanner with a Windows 95 keyboard.

Finally, a new range of Presario multimedia home PCs was announced, featuring the scanner keyboard, a 6 speed CD-ROM, a rewriteable optical disk called a PD-CD with 650Mb of writeable space, multimedia monitors and a Pentium processor. Prices start at $3,300.