The electronics retailer Best Buy did not have its best quarter ever. It reported Tuesday that comparable sales were down about 3% from the same time a year earlier. One bright spot: laptop computers, sales of which grew 7% year over year. Best Buy said on its earnings call that this was the largest increase for laptop sales since April 2021. So why are people choosing to upgrade now?
This fall, Joshua Spokes is taking a graduate-level course in geospatial analysis. His computer needs to be able to wrangle some hefty data sets, and his old laptop just wasn’t cutting it.
“Even when I closed other applications, it was still struggling,” he said. “To the point that basically, like, it wasn’t able to run what I needed it to run.”
So about 10 days ago, Spokes bought a new laptop. It cost slightly less than $2,000. “It’s really nice to have something that’s just a lot snappier,” he said.
People typically replace their laptops every three to four years, said Seth Basham of Wedbush Securities.
Remember what a lot of us were doing four years ago? Hunkering down and buying computers.
“Consumers who bought laptops during the pandemic now are sitting there with laptops that are outdated in terms of battery life, processor speed, etc.,” he said.
Basham said that desire to upgrade is driving laptop sales at Best Buy and across the electronics industry. There’s a similar replacement cycle for tablets, and those sales have also been popping.
“There’s a life cycle to every gadget that you buy,” he said.
Some argue for extending that life cycle. Like Kyle Wiens, the CEO of the online repair guide iFixit, which also sells parts and tools, some of them through Best Buy. He said the first thing that peters out in a laptop is the battery.
“They’re pouches of chemicals, and they wear out, just like … the battery in your car wears out. You have to replace it every so often. And it’s actually really straightforward to replace the battery in most laptops,” he said.
Wiens said he’s also a fan of buying a laptop that’s easy to add (or remove) memory or data storage to. “My wife spilled wine on her laptop the other day, and we just pulled her memory module out, stuck it in another laptop, and she was good to go,” he said.
Another thing that could drive sales in the future? Laptops with artificial intelligence capabilities.
As those computers become more advanced, Wedbush’s Basham said, more people will be willing to buy one.
