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Worldwide PC shipments up slightly in 2009 — is an even more decent 2010 underway?

An IDC Quarterly PC Tracker report released yesterdays found that PC shipments overall for 2009 were up about 2.8 percent over 2008 — not exactly a game changing stat or anything, but we’re sure the manufacturers will take what they can get. The upswing was apparently largely due to the strong fourth quarter, which made up for the abysmal first quarter, second quarter, and semi-abysmal third quarter. In that last quarter of the year, PC sales showed a 15.2 percent growth over 2008 worldwide, while in the US, sales were up 24 percent over the last year, with 20.7 million units shipped. Another trend noted in the report, is, unsurprisingly, the fact that people continue to purchase cheaper PCs — mostly in the form of laptops and netbooks. All this means that retailers and manufacturers profit margins are thinning out, but hey, we’ll leave the worrying to the economists — where’s that circular for the fifteen dollar netbook?

Worldwide PC shipments up slightly in 2009 — is an even more decent 2010 underway? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon Wins for Most Visited Site on Black Friday

As we reported Thanksgiving Day, web searches and traffic for online retailers during the holidays were significantly down as compared to previous years, according to research from Experian Hitwise.

However, this Black Friday showed a 4 percent increase in site visits versus Thanksgiving Day traffic – a stat that usually falls between those two days. The retail site that got the lion’s share of traffic this year was Amazon.com, which netted 13.55 percent of the traffic seen by the top 500 retail websites. Read on for a few surprising stats that might signal changes in the U.S. economy – and changes in how U.S. consumers will be doing their holiday shopping.

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Interestingly, Apple’s website saw the largest increase – by a huge margin – between Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. Overnight, their traffic skyrocketed 110 percent. Traditionally, Apple’s online deals for this red-letter day in commerce were modest at best. However, this year, rumors of substantial discounts were leaked online and spread like wildfire.

The lesson: If you want to see a ridiculous upswing in traffic on a major American retail date, maintain relative stinginess and secrecy, then “leak” good tidings of great joy just before the big day.

Other sites that saw a significant traffic increase in this 48-hour period include Staples (47 percent), Dell (40 percent) and Amazon (9 percent).

So, Apple, Staples and Dell take the cake for getting the greatest traffic spikes overnight; how did websites fare on Black Friday overall?

As you can see in the graph below, Amazon and Walmart each performed admirably. What’s more, most sites saw a marginal increase in traffic over last year’s Black Friday traffic – as you’ll recall, the global economy had recently tanked. Do we see this as a sign of tentative optimism about the economy, at least on the part of American consumers?

Finally, who got the most downstream traffic from Black Friday websites? That would be our friends at Walmart, Best Buy, and Target – the latter of which more than doubled its downstream traffic from last year:

Details for Cyber Monday – traditionally the online retailer’s biggest day during the holiday season – will be available shortly.

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Roundup: Dell up, phishing down, App Store forecasts all around

Dell beats forecasts, boosting stock despite loss in profits — The company reported revenue of $12.9 billion net income of $472 million, 24 cents a share, a 23 percent decline from last year’s $616 million net from $16.4 billion in revenue.  That’s 28 cents per share excluding costs associated with an in-process restructuring. Analysts had forecast $12.6B revenue and 23 cents per share earnings. Dell’s stock price jumped to $15.65 just before the close of trading, a 7 percent surge. The New York Times reports that analysts expect an upswing in corporate spending on Dell computers as the economy gradually recovers and aging equipment gets in the way of worker productivity and cost-effective IT.

Is the iPhone app market worth $2.4 billion a year? I read the same AdMob report as Om Malik, but Om homed in on the craziest biggest number in the thing: AdMob claims that the iPhone App Store is selling apps at a rate of $2.4 billion a year. Why didn’t I run that number? I guess because I don’t believe it.

Sirius introduces an iPhone dock to deliver satellite radio to auto drivers – The $120 dock, available this fall, is designed to plug into a car cigarette lighter. It will use a new connection system that plays the iPod through the car stereo. Customers will be offered the full XM lineup for $12.95 per month, plus a Best of Sirius option for another $4. Sirius’ customer base has dropped from 19 million at the end of 2008 to 18.4 million in June. The Wall Street Journal has the full story.

Phishing emails largely abandoned by fraud careerists — The Register reports that no one knows for sure what all the former phishing experts are doing now to make a living. But it’s definitely true that phishing emails have dropped off. Anti-virus firms are climbing on top of each other to take the credit for detecting phishing emails so well that they’ve put the crooks out of business. That seems to understate the extent to which Internet users have become smarter about emails designed to dupe them. The current crop of phishing emails has reduced its number of targets to two: 43.7 percent are aimed at tricking PayPal users. 13.1 percent target eBay users, as reported to the Register by Russian anti-virus firm Kapersky Lab.

Ad agency sues other agency over its campaign for Bing — Delaware-based Denizen has filed a lawsuit against supersize firm JWT and its parent company WPP. Denizen claims that WPP breached a confidentiality agreement, and JWT stole Denizen’s proposed technique for blending a TV show’s content and characters into advertising, using Denizen’s ideas to create advertising spots for NBC TV show The Philanthropist. Business Insider reports that “Denizen says the ad agency and holding company not only stole its trade secrets for creating integrated ads — which include strategies for obtaining Screen Actors Guild contracts, methods for gaining access or rights to TV program content and ways to shoot the ads — but also made them publicly known due to the number of parties involved in the Bing campaign.”

Net experts who left Forrester join Altimeter — Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang were both Forrester analysts who focused on the Internet. Deborah Schultz went from marketing director at blog software maker Six Apart to social media expert for Procter & Gamble. All three have joined Altimeter, where they will bring Web 2.0 and social media strategies to clients of Altimeter’s consulting business. Altimeter will host a free webinar titled “The Future of Business” on September 10th.

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Demand for solar equipment on the upswing as prices fall

One of the key takeaways from last week’s Intersolar North America conference in San Francisco was the solar panel makers are seeing a much needed uptick in demand as prices for their equipment continue to decline.

Unfortunately, that demand hasn’t made it across the Atlantic to the U.S. quite yet. Europe is leading, with advantageous government incentives securely in place in Germany, Italy and Spain. China too is ramping up its efforts, which should have a major impact on worldwide trends in the coming months.

China, the rising star in the solar space, is benefiting not only from dropping materials costs, but also basement-low labor and manufacturing costs. Europe can’t quite compete in this area. In Europe, silicon panels cost about $2.25 per watt, and analysts see the figure dropping to $2 or lower by the end of the year, reports VentureWire. In China, the price point could sink as low at $1.75 per watt.

There is some concern that the market slowdown that typically dominates the fourth and first sectors in the solar industry will break the momentum, but there seems to be plenty of work to go around for now. Most European and Chinese solar companies see the U.S. as the next growth market and source of demand — especially once the stimulus package does its duty in the fall. In preparation, several of these companies are already setting up shop in North America.

China recently passed its own economic stimulus legislation, earmarking upwards of $30 billion to foster renewable sources of energy, with solar prime among them. Australia has set aside $1.35 billion to finance solar projects, and South Korea has $2.3 billion for renewables. All of these plans could keep demand for solar materials and equipment on the upswing through the slow seasons and into next year.

This doesn’t mean that solar will be the new cleantech cash cow however. With polysilicon prices dropping to $60-$80 from $80-$100 per kilogram, Barron’s predicts that prices will fall between 15 and 25 percent between 2009 and 2010. The same publication has also reserved its optimism when it comes to increased demand, arguing that liquidity and credit availability must rebound to a greater degree before demand can catch up with the glut of solar products on the market.

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