Supposedly we are living in the "Post PC era" but at least for now shipments of PCs worldwide are actually increasing. According to a new report from IDC, PC shipment numbers went up 2.3 percent in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the same time period a year ago. This actually beats previous expectations from IDC who had expected shipments to decline 0.9 percent in the last quarter.
There were some predictions that PC shipments might go down in part because of hard drive shortages, thanks to the flooding of hard drive factories in Thailand in 2011. However, IDC"s new report says PC makers were able to get more access to hard drives than first believed. It said, "As a result, large PC vendors were able to maintain shipments by managing inventory or absorbing price increases, while the impact to shipments from smaller PC makers was in line with expectations."
As far as the rest of 2012 is concerned, IDC states, " ... we expect PC shipments to pick up significantly by the fourth quarter and beyond as HDD supply and pricing are normalized, Windows 8 is launched, and replacements pick up."
HP remains the world"s largest PC maker with $15.714 million PCs shipped followed by Lenovo, Dell, Acer and Asus.