PC sales to see biggest drop since 2001 tech bust; IT spending responsible
Summary: The number of PCs shipped around the globe in 2009 is expected to be lower than the previous year, the first time since the 2001 dot-com bust, according to market research firm iSuppli.Just 287.
The number of PCs shipped around the globe in 2009 is expected to be lower than the previous year, the first time since the 2001 dot-com bust, according to market research firm iSuppli.
Just 287.3 million PCs will be shipped in 2009, a 4 percent decrease from the 299.2 million shipped around the world in 2008, according to a projection in a report released Tuesday by iSuppli.
To be sure, expectations were conservative for this year -- but iSuppli's projection indicates that the industry is on track to do worse than previously thought, with 0.7 percent growth for the year.
(For the last eight years, PC manufacturers have been able to ship more units each year. Such a small figure is highly unusual.)
iSuppli says the culprit is "the fading out of the desktop computer," but I'm not so sure. According to the study, shipments of desktops are expected to decline 18.1 percent this year, while notebooks are on track to grow almost 12 percent this year -- the first time they outpaced desktop shipments for a whole year.
Here's iSuppli's full explanation:
The primary factor driving the decline in the PC market in 2009 is an expected 18.1 percent plunge in desktop shipments. Unit shipments of desktop PCs will amount to 124.4 million in 2009, down from 151.9 million in 2008. Entry-level servers—which iSuppli includes in its definition of PCs—also will suffer a decline, with shipments falling to 6.9 million units, down 9.5 percent from 7.7 million in 2008.
My question: If desktops are merely fading out, why aren't laptops replacing them at a fairly equal rate? Seems to me that average selling prices have certainly been on the decline in the past few years for both types of systems.
(That doesn't mean PC makers aren't bucking the trend: despite it, PC makers continue to push all-in-one desktop computers. But they haven't quite caught on.)
iSuppli offers another point that I think better reflects the drop: a tightening of the belt thanks to a severe dropoff in IT spending by corporate customers. (Think desktops and servers.)
The good news? Dell recently announced that it believes that IT demand is stabilizing.
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Talkback
Everyone is just waiting
something else
these days are fake and bake, its been
a scam easy for the last 3 years. plus
most people already have 3 or 4 PCs
and a laptop.
i think people are tired of being ripped off
by the industry.
let the slump in television sales be the
excuse for lame and screwy Digital TV,
how many manufactures does it take to tamp
out a chip or an LCD screen.
Another idea....
RE: PC sales to see biggest drop since 2001 tech bust; IT spending responsi
applications" that require a more powerful PC.
The people rebelled at Vista which required a more powerful
PC just to run the OS.
A three year old XP machine does every thing most people
need to do on their machine.
Re: Market Saturation & XP
This is basically what I've been telling people for a LONG time and is one of the reasons I don't see Windows 7 being the "OMG CHART TOPPING" success a lot of pundits think it will be.
There [b]really is no[/b] "killer app" anymore. Not for the majority of users [i]or[/i] the majority of business.
And most people see Moore's Law as a sham, even if they don't recognize it as "Moore's Law". They see it as a way for technology companies to keep trying to shove upgrades down everyone's throats for more money, and it's causing a backlash in this current economy.
I'm certainly not shocked.
Hell, I personally won't be in the market for a new system until next spring, and this current system of mine is coming up on 4 years old with only two major upgrades since I originally built it.
RE: PC sales to see biggest drop since 2001 tech bust; IT spending responsible
And on the enterprise-end, cloud computing will cause quite a few hardware surprises too.
The technology hardware industry has really worked itself into small corner and will have a tough time changing that.
People already moved to laptops
RE: PC sales to see biggest drop since 2001 tech bust; IT spending responsible
The lousy economy is holding up spending on non essential.
People waiting for Windows 7.
More people and businesses are buying custom builds and not off the shelf stuff that needs upgrading and changes and this drop is reflected on sales of "name brands".
How we slashed our IT expenditure
1. We been able to revive all sorts of redundant PC kit and reuse it with current, supported versions of Linux. Whereas there is no currently supported version of Windows "small" enough to run on this kit. Good for our budgets & good for the environment
2. On the rare occasions when we have to buy new kit then we can buy sub-(GBP)300 laptops and achieve the same or better performance than much more expensive machines running MS Vista.
Add that to the anticipated savings:-
1. We no longer have to pay for software licenses or antivirus updates etc.
2. We have zero downtime due to viruses, worms, spies, adware, trojans, keyloggers (and all the other hassle you have to suffer with Windows).
Whilst this is bad news for the giant US IT corporations, it's been great for us. We saved an absolute fortune!
Best wishes, G.