By Charles Mgbolu

New indications emerging from the nation’s IT market show a renewed vigor in the battle to hold chunk sized market share between fairly used laptops popularly known an as second hand laptops and brand new computer systems and laptops with the former rising steeply in gross market sale and product popularity. The competition has been further spiked by the recent influx of these fairy used computers in the nation’s markets leaving potential laptop buyers with a tough decision to make.

Again, price has been the weapon with these fairly used laptops going for as low as N18,000 to N35,000 depending on the grade while brand new PC gadgets and laptops go from N50,000 to N350,000 also depending on the grade.

With the staggering price difference, street side marketers dealing in these fairly used products within the market and their scouts that watch with eagles eyes for potential customers no longer have too try so hard. Most consumers make their decisions after only a moments thought giving land slide victory to these second hand dealers.

In a rather obvious situation, brand new laptops and computers face this market share collapse following the dire economic situation of most citizens in the country who are unable to afford the brand new systems. More than 80% of the populace are low income earners and therefore favour the much cheaper computer materials.

This reporter that scouted the market noted that these fairly used laptops and computers are not the usual nameless recycled products that had been witnessed in the mobile phones product category especially during the china phone boom. On the contrary, these laptops come under names that are titans in this product chain.

As if anticipating this influx, brand new laptop brands and computers had earlier in the year fought back with a massive campaign that saw price figures especially in brand new mini laptops and the notebooks categories drop by more than 15% from N60,000 to N80,000 to as low as N40,000 to N55,000.

Hi-tech’s investigation uncovered street side technicians; hard at work on these fairly used computers. They would not speak to this reporter but it was gathered the laptops worked on had been dumped for one reason or other before now being repaired and resold.

The IT age strongly beckons and so a frantic race has ensued to be digitally connected by owning a computer devise but then sector observers have asked ‘at what cost?’

Already, there have been reported cases of people buying these fairly used laptop devices and facing certain risks. Most of the fairly used products have been utter disappointment as shortly after purchase, the devises go into a litany of mechanical faults and seizures before eventually packing up.