SANTA CLARA, CA – First-quarter sales of notebook PCs grew to $31.1 billion, the largest single quarter since the third quarter of 2008, when notebook ASPs were more than 20% higher than at present, says DisplaySearch.

Although ASPs declined for desktop replacement notebooks, they increased for every other category, with double-digit jumps for mini-note PC/slate and ultraportable categories, according to the firm.

In the ultraportable market, a new crop of products that were launched in and around the January CES show helped push revenues up 6% sequentially, but they were still well below year-ago levels, as this category, which tends to be dependent on the enterprise market, continued to struggle.

Positive year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter was a result of strong mini-note PC/slate growth in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific, as well as continued growth in China and North America.

Portable class notebook PC Shipments surged compared to the same quarter last year in Asia-Pacific, China, and Latin America, easily passing average market growth rates for the segment. Shipments of desktop replacement class notebook PCs surged in Europe/Middle East/Africa and Japan, says DisplaySearch.

Shipment growth in the mini-note PC/slate category exceeded the average for the notebook market as a whole, but it appears the momentum is shifting from mini-note PCs to slates. In the fourth quarter of 2009, there were no consumer-oriented slates in the market, and the devices that did exist were targeted at small, vertical markets.
In the first quarter this year, Apple shipped almost 700,000 iPads into the channel, accounting for 6.5% of all mini-note PCs/slates.

In the first two months of the second quarter, the company sold more than two million iPads. DisplaySearch expects the iPad will continue to account for an increased share of the mini-note PC/slate segment in this quarter.

In the second half of the year, as additional slates are launched, the netbook could continue to lose share.

With the emergence of the iPad and other slates, the low-priced netbook segment of the market is transitioning from devices that, though smaller and less expensive, followed typical PC market trends that are built on Office suite applications and content creation to devices that provide the ability to create content.