Solved! Average consumer laptop market share

[cheeseoverdose]

Hello, I'm a engineering student doing research for an Enterpreneurship course. I hope this is the right forum to ask this

My problem is this:

Basically we have to think of a product and we are doing some market analysis as if we were a start-up. We need to estimate the value of the market in which our hypothetical product would be marketed.

In this case, we're aiming for the average middle-range consumer of laptops that doesn't want a lot of specificity (e.g. no hardcore gamers or graphic designers etc). The idea is a laptop with easily switchable monitor/keyboard/mouse and easy access to the usual stuff through just sliding the keyboard like the pi laptop: RAM, storage etc so as to avoid waiting weeks for repairs, just go to the store, buy the module and go. This part the professor already accepted so I do not need advice on that.

The problem is that statistics are impossible to find! We've spent hours googling and we can't find anything about market shares of types of laptops, just brands and totals. I've been recommended to try asking here if someone can point me to websites that track those things or if they have an estimate of those numbers - percentage of sales of general-purpose mid-range laptops - total amount of sales is easy to find. I also would like to know your opinion if our solution appeals to the "green" market, since the point is also reducing laptops that go to the trash for one or two broken components.

Thank you in advance for any help.

 

[Eximo]

You might try reaching out to Amazon. They do have statistics like that, though you may have to do some data mining of your own if they are even willing to provide the data. Kind of their thing though, so they aren't likely to give it up for free. They'll have product names and prices, but not necessarily the computer's hardware specifics.

On your assumption though, I think you are mistaken in that there is a middle ground consumer. If you walk into a retail store you will most often find very low end hardware and very high end hardware. Low end hardware is sold in bulk, and since they become obsolescent faster, more return customers. High end hardware is for people that can afford to do the big bang at longer intervals. Also those will be the computers that are most advertised.

Average consumer, gamer, business/professional. Business/Professional are going to be the true middle range consumers. They don't need powerful graphics, but battery/CPU/disk need to be good enough.

Average consumer and business/professional likely make up the vast majority of PC sales. Gamers are a drop in the bucket, and willing to pay for extra features. Though you now have a large growing population of mainstream gamers, more in the $800-1000 range of laptops.

 

[cheeseoverdose]

Thank you, that's a great insight about the consumers! What I want is the percentage of market share so I can estimate the total money involved in that section of the market, so we can place our fictional startup financially. We also have to find if we're going to fill a hole in the market or try to get a slice of other markets. It doesn't need to be too specific but we do have to have references and so far I haven't found any that I can quote in an academic presentation. I'll try contacting Amazon, nothing to lose. Again, thanks a lot, that helped formulate the problem better in my mind.