A recent study by an IDC senior analyst studied the spending habits of 33.1 million U.S households with home offices. ((It was previously believed that 25 million Americans had home offices. Obviously it is a growing trend).
The study found out some interesting habits, some obvious, some not so obvious.
Not surprisingly, home-office owners tend to be more technologically savvy than non-home-office
homes. Home-office owners are more likely to upgrade their current computers or add additional computers to the home.
But are they buying desktop pc's? Not most. 56% are buying laptops, usually with cd read-write and dvd players. People tend to buy the "thin and light" models.
The second most-popular-category was fully-loaded notebooks that make up 33% of home office sales due to their multimedia capabilities and larger screens.
The least popular choice was the ultra-portable category, which often excludes an optical disk drive as a way to save space and keep the price down.
Home-office owners are more interested in speed and brand name than they are price, and processor speed was much more important than price in the study.
Almost 80% were Dell customers, but a whopping 20% continued to shop.
Our own in-house study at Internet2yourdoor found that Acer, Toshiba, and HP Compaq topped the list, with Acer gaining on everyone (in fact last year Acer outsold Toshiba) in the marketplace; not just at our store but worldwide. This is no surprise (to us) as probably 75% of our own staff has purchased Acer through our own store and are very happy with it. Though the above study confirmed that price is not a factor, our experience is that price is a factor as Acer tends to be less expensive, offering much more bang for the buck than better-known brands. But sales of HP Compaq and Toshiba (and several other brands) do very well in our online store.
Lenovo continues to sell very well as well; and price seems to be a factor (as does processor speed in our own experience with laptop sales.
Though the element of wireless capabilities vs. non-wireless capabilities was not mentioned in the above study, it appears most customers tend to look at wireless as the norm.
The IDC study showed that in the U.S., last May, laptops outsold desktops for the first time in the history of computer sales in this country.
This could easily be a reflection of the growth of popularity of the home office. Most home officer owners prefer the laptop over the desktop now.
So, the question remains, can a home-office "make it" without a desktop pc? Obviously so. It truly seems to be a matter of style. Many home offices have both. The answer, of course, is there is no right way or wrong way (computer-wise) to operate a home-office. It is simply which you prefer.
Rick London is a writer, entrepreneur, SEO professional, cartoonist, and inventory. His work is known worldwide. He founded Londons Times Cartoons http://www.londonstimes.us which is the highly-rated offbeat cartoon site, and owns a number of peripheral gift stores online such as http://www.ricklondoncollection.com and http://www.ricklondonwear.com
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