Retailer: Laptop sales stabilize in Jan–Feb after 4 yrs of fall

MOSCOW, Apr 5 (PRIME) -- Sales of laptops in Russia have resisted a further decrease in January–February for the first time over the last four years and remained flat on the year at over 13.5 billion rubles, or almost 450,000 units, multi-channel retailer Svyaznoy said on Wednesday in a press release.

In February, laptop sales rose 5% in money and 8% in units, for the first time over the recent years as well.

The market has stabilized thanks to several reasons. The laptop became a device for people who are not satisfied with the tablet’s functions, capacities and shape factor. “Buyers are ready to purchase a rather expensive and powerful device with a wider screen diagonal,” the retailer’s analysts said.

“In January–February, 71% of the laptops sold in Russia were computers costing more than 20,000 rubles. The most popular tablets cost less than 20,000 rubles.”

In January–February, an average price of a laptop was 31,000 rubles and of a tablet –8,900 rubles.

The most popular laptop brands in the first two months of 2017 both in money and in units were ASUS, Lenovo and Acer.

One more factor contributing to demand for laptops was stabilization of the economic situation and exchange rates.

Below are figures for previous years:

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Sales in money, bln rbl	145	148	118	104	81	79
Sales in units, mln	7.3	7.6	6.2	4.9	3.0	2.5

The fall of the laptop market had been in force for several years due to a number of reasons, with the main one being a constantly growing popularity of tablets, up to 2014. Tablets replaced less powerful models of laptops and equipped users with small devices with basic functions, including Internet access, media file viewing and the like, the retailer said.

(56.5553 rubles – U.S. $1)

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