Hi.

I need to know approximately how many laptops (not desktops)  might be
sold annually to people under age 20 in the US per year. By sold, I
mean purchased by an individual customer, not by an organization to
provide computers to high schools, for example.   If purchased by
their family for them, that's okay.  The end consumer should be under
the age of twenty.  (Any data with a specific age range, ie 16-20,
12-17, is acceptable.

If you can come up with an estimate based on the number of students
using computers in school, that would be fine.

ANY reasonable estimate would be accepted.  


A speedy answer would be most helpful.

My guess is that around 160,000 laptops are sold to teens every year.
I am giving details of my approximatio below -



Oct 2000
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/ppl-148/tab10.xls
College students, Age: 15-19 (number in thoursands)
Total Full time students = 1443 (males) + 1957 (females)
Total Part time students =  189 (males) + 159  (females)
Total = 3748
   

All numbers are in thousands.
Oct 2002
Total number of college students = 2000
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/school/cps2002/tab06-1.xls
http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/school/cps2002.html

Aug 2000
Total number of households with householders under age of 25 = 6104
Access to home computer/laptop = 43.8 %
# of houses having computers increases upto 70% with education level; 
Since, we are interested in children below 20 (whose education level 
is mostly school or entry level college), we will assume about 40% of 
households with children< 25 have computers.
i.e. #households with children less than 20 & computer = 6104 x 0.4
 = 2441 


From Oct 2000 and Oct 2002 data:
Total # non-college students = 3748 - 2000 = 1748
(Approxiate number, because total # of students in 2002 may be more)

Fact:
Lifetime of laptop for home users = 3-4 years.
To be on conservative side I will take it to be 4 yrs.

My assumptions:
1. 50% of college students tend to buy laptop/PC.
(reasonable based on Aug 2000 data)
2. 50% of students buying computers opt for laptops (observtion).
3. All children below 20yrs buying laptops are students (approx)
4. 20% of non-college students buy laptops (guess)

Final Calculations:
Number of College students buying laptop each year
   = % students buying computer or laptop x 
     % students buying laptops  x 
     Number of College students / LaptopLifetime
   = 0.5 x 0.5 x 2000 / 4
   = 125
Number of non-college students
   = % students buying computer or laptop x 
     % students buying laptops  x 
     Number of non-college students / LaptopLifetime
   = 0.4 x 0.2 x 1748/ 4
   = 34.96

Total #laptop sales to children below 20yrs age = 125+34.96
   = 160

Wow.  Thanks for jumping in.  I'd asked the question in two different
ways and upped the price, and none of the researchers were touching
it.

We're doing a project for an MBA marketing class, and have developed a
PDA alternative marketed at younger people. With a targus keyboard, it
could easily substitute for a laptop for school purposes, with a MUCH
CHEAPER desktop to synchronize with it at home.    We were trying to
go for 10-20% of market share of laptop-buying students.  My team,
however, has decided to just go with 3% of Palm market share,
increasing to 8% over 5 years - but because we're theoretically
increasing total handheld market share, we could even let it maximize
at 5% of Palm's.

I'm quite excited about this project - we present it Tuesday.  I think
it's the best thing I've done yet this year.  :)

Thanks, had you been a researcher I'd have paid for your work.

Since my team met today and we're going with the numbers we had
before, I'm now closing the question.

MCarole