Five Disruptive Forces Challenging PC Industry
Worldwide PC shipments totalling 352.4 million units in 2010, a 14.3 per cent increase from 2009, according to the latest preliminary forecast by Gartner, Inc. These projections are down from Gartner’s previous PC shipment forecast in September of 17.9 per cent growth.
2011 worldwide PC shipments are forecast to reach 409 million units, a 15.9 per cent increase from 2010. This is down from Gartner’s earlier estimate of 18.1 per cent growth for 2011.
“These results reflect marked reductions in expected near-term unit growth based on expectations of weaker consumer demand, due in no small part to growing user interest in media tablets such as the iPad,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10 per cent of PC units by 2014.”
Gartner analysts said there are five dynamics that are challenging the PC industry:
Emerging Markets Continue to Drive Growth
While we expect a continued upside in our emerging market forecast, leading to emerging markets gaining more than 50 per cent of the total worldwide PC market by the end of 2011, mature markets will face mounting challenges. Furthermore, in emerging markets, there is good chance that consumers will simply leap frog PCs and move directly to alternative devices in the coming years rather than following the traditional pattern of purchasing a PC as their first computing device.
Consumer Wallet Continues to Shrink
Home mobile PCs have suffered the steepest downgrade with shipments in mature markets expected to be significantly weaker. Consumers in the US and Western Europe continue to postpone purchases in the face of financial and economic uncertainty. However, Gartner said that the bigger issue for PCs in the home market is consumers temporarily, if not permanently, forgoing PC purchases in favour of media tablets.
Challenge of Emerging Devices
Media tablet capabilities are expected to become more PC-like in the coming years, luring consumers away from PCs and displacing a significant volume of PC shipments, especially mini-notebooks. Media tablets are rapidly finding favour with PC buyers who are attracted to their more-dedicated entertainment-driven features and their instant-on capability.
Extended Life Cycle Impact
The ascent of emerging devices will have an important indirect impact on PCs – the extension of average PC lifecycles. The effect of this ascent will be to spread traditional PC functionality over a variety of complementary devices. As this happens, analysts foresee users extending the lifetimes of PCs because there will be less need to replace them as often.
Uptake of Thin Clients
Hosted virtual desktops (HVDs) are not expected to earnestly impact mature professional markets until 2012, at the earliest. Longer term, users that adopt HVDs to access their compute capabilities will do so predominantly by using refurbished PCs and thin clients. These alternative devices will displace new PC units, thereby reducing expected future desk-based shipment growth.
