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PC sales slow in mobile shift

Tessa Reed
By Tessa Reed, Journalist
Johannesburg, 14 Aug 2012

PC sales slow in mobile shift

Gartner's latest figures for PC sales show that desktop sales are plummeting as the market shifts towards what it calls mobile computers such as laptops and, of course, tablets, CBR Online reports.

As a whole, PC shipments across Western Europe totalled 13.6 million for the second quarter of 2012, a 2.4% decline on the same period a year ago.

However, closer analysis of these figures shows that the fall is mostly from the desktop space, where year-on-year sales fell 12.8%. Mobile sales, such as laptops and netbooks (Gartner does not include tablets in its mobile computer definition) rose 4%.

Overall, HP retained the top spot in the market with a 20.2% share of the market. Acer was second with a 17.3% share, followed by Asus, Dell and Lenovo, writes V3.co.uk.

Analysts said that the drop was particularly harsh in the UK, where shipments fell by some 7.6% on the year. The company suggested that things could only get worse for vendors in the UK as PC makers decide to hold back on marketing pushes for fear of slow sales returns.

“If demand, especially from consumers, remains weak there might be some old stock left in the channels ahead of the Windows 8 launch in October,” PC Pro quotes Meike Escherich, principal analyst at Gartner, as saying.

“This could lead to significant price cuts in September, and challenges may arise in selling new products into the channel in the third quarter of 2012.”

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