PC sales grow, but units not flying off the shelves

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>> Hello I'm Sumi Das for ZDNet here with our Senior Editor, Sam Diaz. Sam thank you for being with us.

>> Sam Diaz: Sure thank you.

>> Sumi: We have November sales figures for PCs and even though the numbers aren't quite as good as they were in October when there was 10% growth, this is not the Armageddon that a lot of folks were expecting so explain the numbers for us.

>> Sam: That's right we saw 6% growth in the month of November which under normal circumstances might not have been a very good thing compared to the 10% in the previous month; but the thing to remember in this climate, in this economic climate, any growth is actually a good thing so I mean even though the growth was down, I still think it's a positive indicator that you know what's happening with PCs. Remember we're looking at a line of desk top computers, notebook computers and this new line of Net Book so there's a lot of stuff happening there in PCs.

>> Sumi: Okay so what are you saying here? Are you saying that it's a good time to buy? Because it wasn't so long ago that we were talking about Windows 7 and how it wasn't going to be released for a while and we were sort of expecting that people wouldn't be buying laptops; that they'd be holding off PCs, laptops, notebooks.

>> Sam: Right. I think everything has changed a little bit; the economic climate certainly has changed and the stars are sort of aligned. The average selling price for a PC is down, we know from Apple which just had a refresh of the notebook line that probably won't be seeing anything new and major coming out of Mac world in January.

>> Sumi: For a while.

>> Sam: Right. And you know we also know that Windows 7 will be a year away so of course you could wait if you'd like, but I don't know that there's necessarily a reason to wait unless of course...

>> Sumi: It's a while to wait.

>> Sam: It is a while to wait.

>> Sumi: If you need a computer.

>> Sam: If you need a computer now this may be the time to do it.

>> Sumi: Okay. So you mentioned that these PC sales figures include the sales of Net Books. Is this going to be the season that Net Books break out?

>> Sam: Oh I don't know that I'd go that far and say this is the time for Net Books to break out although they are seeing a little bit of an attraction, market share is still under 4% so that's not a huge impact, but the pricing is right, they are attractive, consumers are definitely interested in them. I don't know that this is the time for them to break out but there's definitely some interest and it will be interesting to see what Net Books do in 2009 as we gear up for Windows 7 and who knows what will be coming from Apple.

>> Sumi: They may be more popular then.

>> Sam: That's right, yeah.

>> Sumi: All right Sam. Thanks so much.

>> Sam: Thank you.

>> Sumi: For more you can always go to blogs.zdnet.com.

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