Asus expect to ship even more gaming laptops in 2018 than they did in 2017, and this growth is forecast to be the company’s largest in years. While gaming laptops haven’t seen any considerable and sweeping changes to offer gamers greater value for money, the market has made them one of the few reasonable ways to actually pick up a gaming PC this year.
Want the best gaming mouse for on-the-go adventuring? Look no further.
Asus are looking to increase their gaming laptop market by 500,000 units over the course of this year. In 2016, Asus were estimated to have sold 1.2 million of portable gaming machines, which rose by 25% in 2017 to 1.5 million units. A DigiTimes report suggests Asus’ expected sales to increase by 33% in 2018 up to a total of two million units. That’s a hell of a volume increase, but there could be a very good reason why Asus think gaming laptops are in for a boost this year.
With tech consumers looking on in horror at the rising prices for hardware across the board, it may seem like a distant dream for Asus to crank out even more GPU-powered laptops and get them into gamer’s hands. However, gaming laptops are potentially set to come out of this sudden bout of shortages the victor, as these all-in-one machines are simply unnecessary and unsuited for any mining tasks.
Asus lead the charge on gaming laptop sales at the time, although MSI account for a large portion of global sales, too. While the current shortage may be working to these manufacturer’s favour, the situation lending to their potential increased share could – and hopefully will be – short lived. No hard feelings.
While demand is certainly one factor of the current market faults, memory shortages have a tight grip around manufacturer’s supply lines – not to mention rising prices for other components and semiconductors. Gaming laptops could still at least see some rise in price increases or production issues down the line, which could potentially be a limiting factor for their growth in 2018.
Asus’ ROG gaming laptops don’t come particularly cheap, as do very few gaming laptops with any reasonable graphical chops. However, compared to the alternative of buying an artificially pricey GPU, you can potentially grab a graphics card with all the grunt you require in mobile form – even at peak (let’s hope) market inflation – for a price that somewhat doesn’t necessitate the sale of your kidney.