How the laptop is running out of its slice of pie

The laptop is not what it used to be. Sony, Toshiba and now Samsung Witting out of the laptop market Not surprisingly, seeing PC sales declines, caused by a mix of market saturation market (everyone already has a laptop that does not need to be renewed) and the push of tablets and smartphones.

And the truth is that laptops are at a very difficult crossroads. They come from being very successful, with room for many products, and now they have eaten the market everywhere, especially Windows laptops.

Who buys an expensive laptop?

"

The answer to that question is very clear: few. Five hundred euros is usually a high price>"

"As they commented in January in The Guardian, the drop in profits causes manufacturers to try to cut more costs on their products, and on the other hand to seek to increase revenue by adding additional services to their computers. As well as there is no clear incentive to offer a good user experience - there is very little fidelity>"

In the end the drop in prices is having an impact on lower quality (and worse experiences) of laptops

The result is what we already know: laptops with keys that decide to become independent from the keyboard, screens that don't stay at the angle you want, unusable trackpads, useless pre-installed crapware, bad materials, batteries that last derisory after months... In short, products that give a bad user experience

Nothing happened before. If we fall for the trap of the infamous netbooks and all: there wasn't much choice. But of course, tablets and smartphones arrived and the market changed.

I won't be the one to say that a tablet (much less a smartphone) can replace everything a laptop does. At the very least, it's very hard to do without buying multiple accessories, settling for limited releases, and spending a lot more time getting everything to work. However, for many people it's fine with the two or three things that a tablet does well: watch movies, read Facebook or Twitter and check the occasional email. Many even use their smartphones to communicate with their friends and family.

And that's when the laptop goes bad: for what a decent laptop costs I have a tablet or a smartphone, which are easier to carry and in many cases can give you a better experience of user.Manufacturers have not been able to create anything that adds value compared to that (partly because tablets do not add much in themselves, I have always thought that they sell more because are fashionable than because they solve the real needs of so many buyers) and right now it is taking its toll on them.

Combined with the fact that it is no longer necessary to renew a laptop every two years, manufacturers have lost a lot in the consumer market. So the most professional user remains, willing to invest more in a laptop that meets expectations.

And what do expensive laptops offer?

If before it was tablets and smartphones that took away the market from cheap laptops, now it's mainly Macbooks that attack the high-end. And it is that, although it seems a crime to say it, Macbooks are not that expensive for what they offer.Yes, it is true that many people buy them just because they have an apple behind them, but it is that if we go to other high-end laptops we also stay in the range of a thousand euros

I give you an example: Lenovo's high-end. I am not mentioning them just because they are the brand that is experiencing the drop in PC sales the best: I do so mainly because they are a good example of laptops that are not only high-end in technical specifications but also in design, keyboard, resistance... And of course, that costs.

And yes, there are extremely good Windows laptops: Dell's XPS range comes to mind, which isn't cheap either; or the ATIV Book 9 with a fairly high price but features and design to match. The problem with these laptops is that run Windows

Don't misunderstand me. Windows on laptops, although it still has things to improve (I put the trackpad gestures as the main hit), it works very well and meets the needs of most people.The bad thing about it is that it makes low-end laptops compare with high-end ones, and in the end what you see from the outside are two types of laptops with few differences except for price. And of course, it does not sell. In fact, you only have to go through the laptop section of any computer store to see what has the most presence.

Windows does not have the same glamor as Apple, and that shows when it comes to selling at high end

On the contrary, Apple has managed not to fall into that trap and has managed to make its laptops look like devices that are worth their money.

That is to say, when someone wants to invest money in a laptop that is not a nightmare after a year of use, Macbooks come into play, setting the bar quite high for those with Windows, both in terms of features and user perception. And it works for Apple: last year the Macbook Air alone took over half of the ultrabook market.Many things come into play: materials, brand image (both the good one from Apple and the bad one from some other Windows manufacturer), past experiences, operating system ( OS X can't run on non-Mac laptops, but Windows does work on all of them)…

What space is there for Windows laptops?

To recap, we say that many users are substituting their laptop for a tablet or smartphone when they don't need much, and for the high-end, in a niche in which there are already few opportunities , Apple is also setting the bar very high so that Windows laptops can differentiate themselves. Couple that with the fact that there haven't been any significant changes to make a laptop upgrade necessary, and we'll fully understand why manufacturers are leaving

What's left? On the one hand, XP's end of support may give a little push to upgrade older computers, and on the other the new formats (convertible or hybrid, with Microsoft marking the way through Surface) can be more popular by marrying the touch and comfort part with the possibility of being productive with traditional applications and input (mouse and keyboard).Windows with Bing can also help improve manufacturers' profit margins on cheap laptops: in fact at IFA we already saw some interesting proposals.

But be that as it may, the world of Windows laptops is changing irreversibly, not only with new products but also shrinking: manufacturers that can focus on other things will bypass the PC market and in the end only those that can clearly differentiate themselves from their competition will remain.