Last autumn's notebook battery
recall is likely to cause a major shift in market share figures for the
mobile segment, analyst firm IDC projects in a new study.
The analyst firm surveyed about 500 corporate IT buyers and 200 consumers
last October about their confidence in today's battery technologies. About 15
per cent of the respondents said that they will alter their buying because of
the recalls. Although they haven't lost faith in the notebook segment in
general, they are likely to switch to brands that they perceive as more
reliable.
"The silver lining is that most of the customers we surveyed aren't foregoing
notebook purchases," says Richard Shim, senior research analyst with IDC's
Personal Computing program.
"Instead, a small percentage indicate that they will alter their brand
preference, meaning that vendors have an opportunity to win over new customers,
forming new market dynamics."
Laptop makers in the recent months have been forced to recall more than seven
million batteries when a
Dell laptop
caught fire in Tokyo last June. After
vnunet.com's sister publication The
Inquirer published photos of the incident, Dell recalled a total of 4.1
million batteries. Apple and other laptop makers soon followed.
The affected batteries were all supplied by Sony, which has said that the
problems were caused by tiny metal particles floating around inside the battery
that could cause the unit to short circuit.
Hewlett Packard (HP) and Gateway are among the notebook makers that didn't
recall any overheating batteries as part of the Sony recall, but HP has done so
earlier this year.
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