The Gift of a Home PC – A TUPdate by Dan Ness, November 3, 2017
Many Home PCs arrive wrapped with a bow, having been a gift from some well-meaning friend or family member. In our most recent wave of Technology User Profile (TUP 2017 US), we found that 11% of recently acquired (2016 or 2017) Home PCs were acquired as a gift.
Many of the gift Home PCs came with more than wrapping and a bow, with a higher-than-average share bundled with a scanner, monitor/display, and printer. It stands to reason that these generous donors are including their used scanners, monitors, and printers.
Acer and ASUS have a higher market share among gift Home PCs (at 18% and 8%, respectively) than among all Home PC users. Dell and HP have the strongest share, although not markedly different than their share among all recently-acquired Home PCs.
Gifts for Who?
Who uses a Home PC that came as a gift? Those using them are younger than the average Home PC user, with a mean age of 38, three years less than the average age for users of recently-acquired Home PCs. A higher-than-average share are Young Millennials (age 18-27), at one-third of gift Home PCs users while just less than one-fourth (23%) of Home PC users are in this age group.
Full-time college students are included with this largesse, although they only make up a small share (9%) of these fortunate recipients. Among both full-time and part-time college students, those attending a 4-year college make up the largest group of those using a gift Home PC.
Other Technology Used by Home PC Gift Recipients
Gift Home PC recipients are behind most recent Home PC users in the range of technology products they use. They’re below average in their use of Tablets, Smartphones, and Basic cell phones. There’s one area, though, where they are far ahead of Home PC buyers: their use of Public/shared PCs and Public/shared Printers. One in nine (11%) and one in six (16%) regularly use a PC and Printer, respectively, which is owned by someone other than their Home or Employer.
Looking Ahead
Users of gift Home PCs have intentions beyond using their current Home PC. Within the next 12 months, they intend to purchase a number of other technology devices. Fourteen percent of these users have plans to purchase a 2-in-1 Laptop and 10% to purchase a Tower Desktop PC. Ten percent plan to purchase a Basic cell phone (not a Smartphone), and 7% to buy a Smartwatch (that is not Apple or Google Android). Six percent plan to bring their own WiFi with them with a portable hotspot, and another 6% plan to lessen their WiFi dependency and get a cellular Android tablet.
About this TUPdate
This TUPdate includes a complimentary brief summary of recent MetaFacts TUP (Technology User Profile) research results. These results are based on the most-recent results of the MetaFacts Technology User Profile 2017 survey, its 35th wave, with over 7,000 respondents (US). Similar results are available through TUP fielded in Europe and Asia. For more information about MetaFacts and subscribing to TUP, please contact MetaFacts.
Resources
Current TUP subscribers can tap into any of the following TUP information used for this analysis or for even deeper analysis.