The global PC market is facing tough times as worldwide shipments of personal computers have continuously fallen in this years’ third quarter, which is the sixth straight quarter of decline for the market. Increasing popularity and demand for smartphones and tablets have led to a decline in demand for personal computers, reports market research firms IDC and Gartner Inc.
While IDC claims a decline of around 8 percent in the PC market amounting to 81.6 million units, Gartner has put the decline at around 9 percent amounting to 80.3 million units.
According to IDC, the PC market has faced its worst this year and will show signs of improvement in 2015 when companies and consumers both would be forced to replace aging PCs. Gartner expect 2013 to be the worst phase for the PC market with flat shipments in the coming year and single-digit percentage growth in 2015.
Jay Chou, a senior IDC analyst said “There’s sort of a rubber band effect where PCs that need to be replaced will be”.
Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst from Gartner said that consumers in developed countries though are spending a lot on other gadgets; they won’t stop using PCs completely. “The overall market size will shrink, but at some point those old PCs will be replaced by new ones,” she said.
The U.S. PC market according to IDC was almost unchanged, while Gartner reported a 3.5 percent increase in PC usage in the U.S. market. Gartner said that Intel’s new low-power Haswell line of chips and low supplies of PCs in the U.S. market led to increase in PC demand, while IDC attributed the increase in demand to falling prices of touch-screen laptops.
