Global PC sales are expected to drop 4.9% this year, as the IDC expects the downward sales spiral to worsen during 2015.
Initially, worldwide PC sales were anticipated to decline 3.3% during 2015. Although the outlook for the channel is worse for 2015, overall sales are expected to gain in 2016 and 2017, although only slightly, the IDC's latest Worldwide Quarterly Tracker notes.
This prediction comes just after the IDC noted the Middle East and Africa (MEA) PC market was continuing to recover as it posted its third successive quarter of year-on-year growth in the last quarter of 2014.
According to the IDC, the MEA market had experienced seven consecutive quarterly declines experienced leading up to the second quarter of 2014. The overall market grew 2.8% year-on-year for the quarter, spurred primarily by shipments of portable PCs and the return to a semblance of stability in certain key markets across the region.
The IDC notes emerging markets continue to struggle, finishing 2014 with a decline of 9.5% in PC shipments and with 2015 growth projections lowered to negative 4.7%, pushing volume down throughout the forecast. This has been attributed to continued political instability, commodity pricing pressures, and currency devaluations in these regions, which curtailed spending across a number of sectors.
Head winds
Globally, fourth quarter sales were 1.7% ahead of the IDC's expectations, but it cautions that "economic and product changes will create a head wind in the short-term". During this year, the research company expects 293.1 million units to be sold, but this will fall to 291.4 million in 2019.
Last year, the PC market was worth $201 million, a decline of just under a percent in value. The monetary value of sales is anticipated to decline another 6.9% this year, although smaller declines are predicted in subsequent years, bringing the total to $175 billion by 2019.
The IDC notes factors affecting the PC market include the strong dollar, which makes units more expensive elsewhere, Microsoft's scaling back of Bing subsidies, and the pending launch of Windows 10, which will move consumer interest towards the latter half of 2015.
Locally, the launch of Windows 10 is seen as hampering PC sales in the channel, although it does provide an opportunity for distributors to reinvent themselves. PC sellers can also expect some respite in the decline in tablet sales, a device that had previously been eating into the PC market.
Tablet drop-off
The tablet market recently suffered its first year-over-year decline, and shipments are now expected to reach 234.5 million units globally this year, said the IDC. This is a modest year-over-year increase of 2.1% from 2014, it added.
"Fortunately for PC makers, tablet growth has slowed," notes Jay Chou, senior research analyst for Worldwide PC Trackers. "The PC ecosystem has also begun to see some fruits from efforts to narrow the divide between the PC and mobile devices in terms of both user experience and price points. Nevertheless, much more needs to be done as advances in both hardware and software are expected to benefit an ever-wider spectrum of form factors, such as 2-in-1 devices that will further siphon volume from notebooks."
"The PC market is quietly stabilising after the installed base reduction driven by users diversifying their device portfolios. Installed base PC displacement by tablets peaked in 2013 and the first half of 2014. Now that tablets have mostly penetrated some key markets, consumer spending is slowly shifting back to PCs," adds Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
Share