Research firm Gartner have published their predictions for PC sales for 2009, predicting that worldwide sales will fall by 6% from 2008 levels. The sales of netbooks, however, are set to rise.Gartner forecast that 274 million computers will be sold this year, down from 292 million units last year. This is actually higher than the 257 million units they predicted earlier this year due to growth that is expected in the fourth quarter of 2009. This growth is set to then set continue into 2010 with a growth of 10.3% currently projected.
21 million netbooks are expected to have been shipped this year and 30 million are predicted for next year. The report also says that there is increasing competition between netbooks and "low-end mainstream mobile PCs" - which include Apple's iPhone and Amazon's Kindle according to The Microsoft Blog. Mobile computers are themselves set for a 4.1% increase in sales from last year to 149 millions units, but overall spending on them is set to decrease by 12.8% as they become cheaper.
Desktop PCs sales are predicted to fall by 15.7% from last year to 125 million, with spending on them declining by 26.6%. George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, commented: "Both mobile-PC and desk-based PC units are being held back by users extending PC lifetimes and delaying replacements in response to the ongoing economic slowdown. The good news for the industry is that delayed replacements won't be lost replacements. Our research indicates replacements should grow strongly in 2010 and 2011, helping to power the market's recovery."
Gartner's analysts also predicted that the release of Windows 7 in October of this year is unlikely to cause a large upturn in PC sales. "Although the buzz surrounding Windows 7 has generally been quite positive, we don't expect the market to significantly deviate from its normal seasonal trends in reaction to its release," Mr Shiffler said. "Unless Microsoft mounts a major marketing campaign in support of Windows 7, we think consumers will simply adopt the new operating system (OS) as they would normally buy new PCs and/or replace old ones." In regards to business users, he added: "we still expect them to put off adopting the new OS for at least a year until they have fully tested their applications against it."
Since Win7 runs on older hardware better than Vista did, there wouldn't be much reason to update the hardware. There is also XP, Netbooks, and useless Intel GPUs that hold the PC market back from increasing hardware requirements. That's not exactly a bad thing (except for those Intel GPUs), but hardware OEMs are going to be short on justification for more powerful PCs.
I think it will be a big hit, but it will take a year or more, unless the economic slump we're in pulls out sooner.
Last edited by Kevin. on 29 Jun 2009 - 18:46
Uh @Gartner .. windows 7 isnt out yet...
true!
It's that XP is good enough, and the market having stabilized a lot. You don't need new computers for faster CPU's as much as before, or to add USB support to connect new kinds of peripherals etc. Windows 7 is a lot about applying much needed polish to Vista, but even Vista wasn't very important even if disregarding its flaws.
My girlfriend just switched to Windows XP some year ago, from Windows 98... At work, we run by far mostly XP, some Vista, but have no plans at rolling out Windows 7 anytime soon. I dunno, I can do the essentials from word processing to video recording and playing movies on my TV on four year old systems nowadays. And they don't even feel very slow on XP. I think that's something that has changed since 10 years ago or so, when the PC market was moving much more. A lot of attention these days seem to have rather turned to adding mobile phone features.
I'd be willing to bet a huge majority of them get returned to the store. Meanwhile people realize they need more power and buy a REAL laptop instead, or a desktop. My 5 year old notebook is far faster than any Netbook.
Of course if this was Apple, then all they would be all over promoting how much overpriced Apple sales would increase.
All these "predictions" by these companies are just some guy sitting in an office, and his opinion about life. Its not like they actually know anything. Just like all the stupid stock "analysts" you see on CNBC who know nothing.
:-/
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