U.S. PC Market Wraps Up Worst Year Since 2001
With a brutal fourth quarter, PC vendors concluded a tough year for the industry.
In the U.S. Compared to Q4 2010, PC shipments dropped by 6.7 percent from 19.9 million units to 18.6 million. HP held on to its leading rank, but sold only 4.3 million PCs during the quarter, which was down 25.3 percent from 2010. Dell was down by 4.7 percent to 4.2 million, but Apple beat the trend and climbed by 18 percent to 2.0 million PCs. Acer dropped to number 5 with 1.5 million PCs, behind Toshiba with 1.9 million.
According to IDC, the shortage of hard drives and increasing competition from media tablets impacted the industry, and added to the already fragile economic climate. Globally, the PC industry sold 92.7 million Units, a decline of 0.2 percent year-over-year. For the entire year, U.S. PC sales were down 4.9 percent to 71.3 million units, while global demand climbed by 1.6 percent to 352.4 million PCs.
"In the United States, market saturation and the economic environment continue to weigh considerably on consumer demand. However, the market is awaiting new products and technologies, promising a new refresh cycle starting in 3Q12 and beyond with a return to positive growth in the mid-term," said David Daoud, research director, Personal Computing at IDC. According to IDC, 2011 was, behind 2001, the "second worst year in history" for the U.S. market.
In contrast, Europe and Asia/Pacfic performed "a little stronger" than expected, the market research firm said.
For the first quarter of this year, IDC expects the market to slow even more as the impact of the hard drive shortage is now felt on a broad basis. However, as the industry bounces back, PC makers are forecast to gain about 15 percent in shipments by the fourth quarter. 2012 shipments are currently forecast at 371 million, an increase of 5.4 percent over 2011. 2013 is predicted to achieve growth "in high teens" during the first half of the year.
We posted at the same time. Last figures I saw indicate DIY pc's are a very very tiny drop in a great big bucket.
We posted at the same time. Last figures I saw indicate DIY pc's are a very very tiny drop in a great big bucket.
Bad: The technological leap for PC will be very slow or expensive because of low demand.
But only in the USA apparently, and seeing as Smartphones and Tablets are also sold to the other 95% of the worlds population and PC growth was up there as well, I would say the problem lies with the USA, not with the PC industry.
http://gigaom.com/apple/macs-still-growing-while-rest-of-u-s-pc-market-stagnates/
Don't flame me, I have purchased both a Mac and Wintel PC this year. Have you?
I built maybe 10 PCs for friends and family this year, I bet those weren't counted and neither were the other many, many, many DIY PCs built last year.
I can't seem to find the stats for Apple Mac sales worldwide, as the story was refering to US sales and global sales being down and up respectively, does Mac have US sales versus global sales being up and down respectively?
Any links you can post to show would be nice so we can get the whole story.
I thought it was CRAP games and shovelware, free-2-play, world of warcraft clones tht killed the PC star.
Too "stupid"? Not everyone's line of work involves digital content creation. Being able to consume media is all some people need.
I would point the change more towards the shift toward tablets for consumers, and a decision to keep older PCs in businesses.
At work (University) we typically buy a whole new set of PCs every 3 years to ensure PCs are always on warranty. Due to rather large budget cuts, we have opted not to buy new PCs even though our PCs have been off of warranty for more than 2 years now.
As for the increase in Apple computers, they are simply doing well right now. They are the trending brand. I congratulate them and hope they continue to grow. Doesn't matter if you think Apple is the root of all evil or not; the way I see it, the extra competition from Apple will do nothing but help the consumer PC industry try to scramble and catch back up.
If you aren't gaming, you are doing it wrong ;p
There is a point where the PC gets fast enough to handle everything the 'average' user needs.
That means he/she will stop upgrading and only replacing if broken.
So unless we find something else to do for our computers that current technology can not handle this will be a continuing trend in the domestic sales numbers.