Warranties Are Selling With Notebooks at a Consistent Rate Year-Over-Year Despite Growing Chromebook Sales

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According to The NPD Group’s VAR Invoice Tracking Service, warranties remain a critical part of the notebook sales purchase. Twenty percent of all notebooks sold with a warranty attached during the 12 months ending April 2016. Year-over-year this has remained consistent despite lower priced products like Chromebooks capturing more notebook sales. In the 12 months ending April 2016, notebook average sales prices (on invoices that included a warranty) fell 22 percent versus the prior year, driven by the strong growth of Chromebooks.

Overall, notebook computers and the devices that are sold in conjunction with them lead invoice sales in the Value-Added Reseller channel. Warranties were most frequently sold with notebooks (20 percent of notebook invoices include warranties), followed by docking stations (18 percent), and monitors (nearly 10 percent) during the 12 months ending April 2016.

Chromebooks accounted for 61 percent of all notebooks sold with warranties, up 164 percent since the year prior (12 months ending April 2016). In fact, the top five notebooks sold with warranties were all Chromebooks. The following brands saw the highest rate of warranties sold by notebook unit volume from May 2015- April 2016:

Brands with Highest Rate of Warranties Sold by Notebook Unit Volume

  1. Lenovo
  2. HP, Inc
  3. Acer
  4. ASUS
  5. Dell

“Traditionally higher value notebooks deliver the most attached services and accessories to the reseller,” said Michael Diamond, Director, Industry Analysis, Commercial Technology for The NPD Group. “The fact that warranty sales have remained steady despite the growth in lower ASP Chromebooks is an indicator that partners are focusing on maintaining invoice value to help offset the impact of lower priced Chromebooks.”

Methodology

The NPD Group’s VAR Invoice Service provides insights and analysis about the products and brands purchased together in the VAR channel. Information is based on monthly point-of-sale reporting of commercial technology hardware subcategories, including networking, computing, printing, storage hardware, and others. NPD tracks 1,400 brands from a sample of about 600 VARs.