PC Sales Decline further in 2013

The deterioration of the computer industry is still on-going, making this the longest slump ever recorded in the history of computers. In recent surveys conduct by research companies Gartner and IDC, it was discovered that sales went down 10% during the second quarter of the year. While the figures might seem dismal, it’s surprisingly better than the first quarter’s numbers of 11.2%.
pc-sales-q2-2013 Gartner analysts are saying that contrary to popular belief, tablets are the reason for the seeming disintegration of the PC market and not, as most people think, the Windows 8. Case in point, Microsoft’s business didn’t fluctuate at all. Despite PC sales going down, Microsoft’s performance was flat and steady due to sales of the Surface. The sharp decline for the demand for computers is linked directly to the rise of affordable tablets. Whereas stand-alone PCs are often used in competitive businesses, its price and the economy more or less drove consumers to put off buying desktops and just go for the cheaper tablets. And it’s not just desktops sales that are suffering, the notebook market is also feeling the pinch.

Admittedly, the Windows 8 did contribute to the decline of PC sales as the market struggled to adapt and move to the operating system’s touch-based interface. But Microsoft is hoping to change that perception with the Windows 8.1 update which is also expected to be integrated in all its new PCs by fall.

Another probable reason for the weak sales of the second quarter is the inventory clearing that companies do to make way for new, eagerly anticipated gadgets that will undoubtedly generate more interest.

As it stands now, a big chunk of the market has been appropriated by Lenovo with 16.7% sales and 12.67 million units shipped. It’s followed by the 12.4 million units that HP moved, giving it a 16.3% share of the market. Number three vendor is Dell with sales of 8.9 million and then Acer and Asus.

But all is not lost, there’s a collective effort by the companies to try and lower the price of PC’s and to adapt to touch computing to make personal computers more competitive. But computer companies do admit that there’s still a long way to go before they can go head to head with tablets in terms of price and its recall with consumers.