End of an Era?

More like an equilibrium

By Anca Gagiuc on Jul 3, 2013 in Technology

According to Gartner, the worldwide PC shipments are expected to drop from 341 million units in 2012 to 305 million this year (-10.6 percent), and reduce to 289 million in 2014. Sales are on a downslide partly because of the competition from tablets, and even smartphones to some extent.

At a first glance, this decrease may seem worthy of one of those frequently used online headlines like “The end of the PC era.” Up close, it appears like PCs have arrived at an equilibrium. Those currently in use have enough power to satisfy the needs of most users, while the incremental improvements in the newer models are not enough to warrant investment in another PC. For the business environment, the stable, reliable, unexciting PC remains an important device.

The Gartner report divides the devices and provides shipment numbers for other ones, also, such as “ultramobiles,” tablets and mobile phones. Each research firm has developed its own measurement system, and the categories are not always cohesive. For Gartner, ultramobiles include “Chromebooks, thin and light clamshell designs, and slate and hybrid devices running Windows 8.” All these sectors are thriving, the report shows that the overall shipments are up 5.9 percent this year, and predicts further growth for next year.

An increase of over 60 percent year over year is forecasted for tablets as consumers and professionals have discovered that portable devices can meet many of their needs, freeing them from their desktops and allowing them to move freely. The lower priced basic tablets seem to be taking up a higher share and at a faster pace than previously anticipated. Case in point: sales of the iPad Mini represented already 60 percent of overall iOS tablet sales for the first quarter of 2013.

“The increased availability of lower priced basic tablets, plus the value add shifting to software rather than hardware will result in the lifetimes of premium tablets extending as they remain active in the household for longer,” noted Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.

The mobile phone market shows a steady but certain growth (4.3 percent) with shipments reaching more than 1.8 billion units this year and over 1.9 billion in 2014. The operating system market is believed to bring Google’s Android to power over 866 million devices by the end of 2013, and reach 1.06 billion in 2014.

Windows keeps an unsecured second position on the market with over 339 million this year and over 378 million in 2014, closely followed by Apple’s iOS/MacOS with 296 million in 2013 and over 354 million in 2014 respectively. RIM shows a slight decrease year over year, from the over 25 million by the end of 2013 to a bit over 22 million next year.

The only one with a homogenous presence across all segments is Apple. 90 percent of Android sales are in the mobile phone market, while 85 percent of Microsoft sales are in the PC market.

The analysis and forecasts show that regardless of the small differences in the metric systems or in the set categories: PCs are not dying, but evolving into better, more mobile devices. The tablet market is growing faster than the PC market is shrinking.