PC Market Downgraded from Bad to Worse by IDC
PC Market Downgraded from Bad to Worse by IDC by UCStrategies Staff
The 2013 forecast for PC shipments from IDC was downgraded recently from bad to worse, as the research firm expects sales to take a 9.7 percent dive. IDC stated PC shipments will rise a small amount in 2014, but will fall from then on.
IDC said PCs will “never regain the peak volumes last seen in 2011.”
VARs and anyone tracking large PC makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo are not surprised by the latest IDC statement.
The president and founder of Newton, Massachusetts-based SMR Consulting, Andrew Cohen, stated: “Hardware has gotten so powerful, and Windows 7 is a stable; there is no compelling reason to buy a new PC.” He added that upgrade cycles can take up to five years: “Over the last few years, the number of PCs I sell has been headed one way: down.”
The senior research analyst at IDC, Jay Chou, said: “Without an adequate mass of compelling applications, the PC market is poised to subsist primarily on lukewarm replacements in the future.”
IDC referenced the rise of mobile devices as a cause for the fall of the PC market, and this is particularly the case in emerging markets. According to IDC, PC makers are no longer able to depend on “emerging market growth that the industry had come to rely on in recent years.”
According to IDC, the U.S. market was stronger than expected, and PC shipments were pushed by system refreshes as businesses upgraded to Windows 7, and this was due to a strengthening economy.
The lack of demand for PCs in China is a significant factor for this year’s shipment shortfall.
There have been advances in PC hardware and software like power efficiency of x86 processors and Windows 8.1, and this is very encouraging. However, PCs, according to Chou, are not able to rival the changing mobile world dominated by tablets. (CY) Link