Long-term outlook isn’t all that bad, though
Research firms IDC and Gartner have published their respective PC shipment estimates for the first quarter of 2015 and they don’t make for pretty reading. According to both firms, the PC market squandered the momentum of recent quarters during the latest three-month period, though they don’t see eye to eye on the extent of the decline in global PC shipments.
Gartner says shipments during the period totaled 71.7 million units, a fall of 5.2 percent from the first quarter of 2014. As bad as those figures may seem, they are markedly better than the latest numbers coming out of IDC. That firm has pegged the extent of the year-on-year decline at a much more precipitous 6.7 percent. PC shipments, IDC says, totaled 68.5 million units in the first quarter.
It’s clear from a combined reading of the two sets of findings that the Windows XP replacement cycle, which boosted PC sales during the second half 2014, has now run out of steam. However, it is not all doom and gloom for the PC market, as both IDC and Gartner expect better things in the long term.
"However, this decline is not necessarily a sign of sluggish overall PC sales long term. Mobile PCs, including notebooks, hybrid and Windows tablets, grew compared with a year ago. The first quarter results support our projection of a moderate decline of PC shipments in 2015, which will lead to a slow, consistent growth stage for the next five years,” Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, was quoted as saying in a press release.
Meanwhile, Rajani Singh, a senior research analyst at IDC, seemed to echo Kitagawa’s sentiments in a press release Thursday: “The upcoming launch of Windows 10 will consolidate the best of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. In addition to the free upgrade for consumers for a year after the release, Windows 10 should be a net positive as there is pent-up demand for replacements of older PCs. Only part of the installed base needs to replace systems to keep the overall growth rate above zero for rest of the year.”
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