Sony (NYSE:
SNE
), Dell (NASDAQ:
DELL
) and Acer appear to have had a successful Black Friday. The
three companies sold a large number of Windows 8 PCs last week as
consumers endured massive crowds and long lines on the biggest
shopping day of the year.
In conducting a retail survey, Global Equities Research
analyst Trip Chowdhry found that Acer and Sony produced the
"hottest-selling Windows 8 notebooks." According to Chowdhry,
Microsoft (NASDAQ:
MSFT
) Stores had a "very strong promotion" on the Acer Aspire V5
notebook, which is powered by an Intel (NASDAQ:
INTC
) Core i5 processor. He estimates that each Microsoft Store had
about 500 units. "[They] were completely sold out within the
first 30 minutes," Chowdhry wrote in a note to investors and
reporters. During the promotional period, Microsoft sold the
Aspire V5 for $399.
Not to be outdone, some Microsoft Stores also sold out of a
$1,500 touch-enabled Ultrabook from Sony. "Sony Vaio Touch Intel
i7 was the fastest selling Windows 8 notebook in the high-end
category," Chowdhry added.
While this may be the year that the
desktop PC died
, Dell has not given up on the market. And it's a good thing, too
-- if it had, it could not have built the fastest-selling
all-in-one Windows 8 desktop. On Black Friday, Dell's XPS One 27
earned that crown.
Chowdhry said that while he could not get any color on the
number of units available, the converged view was that the
"demand was too high" for Dell's $2,000 machine.
Not every Windows 8 device performed well on Black Friday.
Chowdhry estimated that Microsoft lost one in five sales on the
Surface RT because of the ARM (NASDAQ:
ARMH
) chipset. "Had Microsoft first shipped Surface on Intel chips
vs. on ARM chips, sales of Surface would have been 5X better than
current levels," the analyst wrote.
Regardless, Chowdhry found that Microsoft "had decent sales on
Windows Surface RT."
"We observed a lot of interest in Microsoft Surface, but
interest was not necessarily leading to sales," he said. "We
spoke to no less than 30 people, who showed the most interest in
Microsoft Surface RT, but did not make the purchase. 'We are
going to wait for the Pro version of the Surface, as that will
run on Intel Chips,' was the unanimous view we got."
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