Screens get wider, laptop sales grow

With their increasingly sophisticated entertainment features, wide-screen laptops are grabbing a larger slice of the domestic laptop market. A survey by Display Search, a U.S.-based market research firm, showed that sales of wide-screen laptops more than doubled to make up 34 percent of all laptops sold in the first quarter of this year in Korea. The market share of wide-screen laptops should rise again in the third quarter to 41 percent, the research company predicted. At Samsung Electronics Co., Korea’s leading electronics manufacturer, laptops with wide screens constituted more than 20 percent of its total laptop sales in the first half of this year, compared with just 5 percent during the same period a year ago. Meanwhile, at TriGem Computer Inc., the nation’s second-largest computer maker, wide-screen laptops account for a whopping 90 percent of all laptop sales so far this year, up from 40 percent at the same point last year. And LG Electronics Co.’s wide-screen laptops have taken up 35 percent of its laptop sales this year. According to a spokesman from Samsung Electronics, consumers are increasingly seeing laptops not just as office equipment, but as a convenient way to watch DVDs or digital multimedia wherever and whenever they want. The new wide-screen laptops are fitted with 16:9 aspect ratio panels, which matches the format of many films. Industry experts forecast that the new 15.4-inch-wide-panel laptops will sell 4.1 million units in the last quarter this year, soundly beating projected sales of the older 15-inch models at 3.9 million. by Kim Chang-woo