After 11 years of growth, sales of PCs -- including notebooks,
netbooks and desktops -- are expected to decline. This revelation
comes from
three
different researchers. In a
report
by IHS (NYSE:
IHS
) iSuppli, the researcher showed that worldwide PC shipments will
contract this year by 1.2 percent to 348.7 million units. In
2011, 352.8 million units were shipped.
In
another report
, IDC found that worldwide PC sales declined by 8.6 percent in
the third quarter. In the United States alone, shipments declined
by 12.4 percent. Gartner (NYSE:
IT
) published
similar results
.
"There was great hope through the first half that 2012 would
prove to be a rebound year for the PC market," Craig Stice,
senior principal analyst for computer systems at IHS, said in a
company release
. "Now three quarters through the year, the usual boost from the
back-to-school season appears to be a bust, and both AMD and
Intel's third-quarter outlooks appear to be flat to down.
Optimism has vanished and turned to doubt, and the industry is
now training its sights on 2013 to deliver the hoped-for rebound.
All this is setting the PC market up for its first annual decline
since the dot-com bust year of 2001."
Gartner concurred with this assessment.
"Retailers were conservative in placing orders as they
responded to weak back-to-school sales," said Mikako Kitagawa,
principal analyst at Gartner, who also quoted in a
company release
. "By the end of September, retailers were focused on clearing
out inventory in advance of the Windows 8 launch later this
month. On the professional side, there was minimum impact from
Windows 8 in the quarter because the professional market will not
adopt Windows 8 PCs immediately after the release."
"PCs are going through a severe slump,"
added
Jay Chou, a senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide PC
Tracker. "The industry had already weathered a rough second
quarter, and now the third quarter was even worse. A weak global
economy as well as questions about PC market saturation and
delayed replacement cycles are certainly a factor, but the hard
question of what is the 'it' product for PCs remain unanswered.
While Ultrabook prices have come down a little, there are still
some significant challenges that will greet Windows 8 in the
coming quarter."
Dell (NASDAQ:
DELL
) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:
HPQ
) are among the biggest companies enduring declines. In the third
quarter, Gartner said that Hewlett-Packard declined by 16.4
percent worldwide while Dell dropped 13.7 percent. In the United
States, the declines were even greater.
Domestically, Apple (NASDAQ:
AAPL
) suffered as well. While the company released a
brand-new version
of the MacBook Pro and knocked $100 off the 13-inch MacBook Air,
Apple still experienced a decline of 6.1 percent.
IDC's numbers are nearly on par with Gartner's, but there is
one exception: IDC's research shows that Apple declined by seven
percent.
IHS iSuppli did not provide any specific details regarding how
individual corporations are performing.
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