Thursday 11 April 2013

PC shipments drop: Smartphones and tablets were the culprits.

   PC shipments have been struggling a bit for quite while now, but apparently the start of this year has been the worst quarter for PC sales yet! According to the IDC the first quarter of this year saw total shipments drop to 76.3 million, a drop which has been attributed to smartphone and tablet sales.

   The IDC revealed that PC shipments fell 13.9% compared to the same period in 2012 and that is considerably worse than the projected 7.7% sales drop which was forecast. For the purposes of clarity the IDC lists desktops, portables, mini notebooks, and workstations as PCs but handhelds, x86 servers and tablets aren't considered computers.

   With that in mind the table below demonstrates how the biggest five PC companies are getting on and it's bad new for everyone except Lenovo, who probably have their home market CHina to thank for their flat-lining sales. Everyone else's sales dropped down by varying amounts.

   The IDC's David Daoud said that:
"Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome.. The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer."
    Windows 8 is also taking some of the blame here too with Bob O'Donnell adding that:
"While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices."
   In case you were wondering where Apple were, because they normally top the PC sales charts with statistics companies who include the iPad in their figures, well they're in sixth in this chart. The guys from Cupertino sold 4.1 million Macs, compared to the 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPads in the last quarter. The Mac sales were down from 5.2 million in the year before. Their CFO, Peter Oppenheier said:
 “We established new all-time quarterly records for iPhone and iPad sales, significantly broadened our ecosystem, and generated Apple’s highest quarterly revenue ever.”

   Obviously this year over year decline is worrying for all manufacturers and it goes a long way to explaining why we've seen a lot more devices like the Asus Vivotab and the HP Envy X2 knocking around. We'll keep an eye out for more comparisons in the coming months to see how things fare!
BusinessWire Via PocketLint.

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