Commentary

Can PCs Survive In A Mobile World?

Along with smarter TV’s, mobile devices are making the personal computer increasingly irrelevant.

As fresh estimates from Gartner and IDC show, the growing computing power and content-friendliness of mobile gadgets continues to weigh on the once-indestructible PC marketplace.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, worldwide PC shipments fell 8.3% -- marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decline, Gartner estimates. Stateside, PC shipments were down 3.1% from the fourth quarter of 2014 to the fourth quarter of 2015.

“Holiday sales did not boost the overall PC shipments, hinting at changes to consumers’ PC purchase behavior,” Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, notes in new report.

In other words, the problems ailing PCs are not cyclical, and instead should be attributed to increasingly mobile-minded consumers -- along with TVs that can carry Web content, and perform content searches, among other computer-like tasks.  

Domestically, “Notebooks were off the top wish list of holiday gifts,” according to Kitagawa. “Consumers’ interest shifted to other consumer electronics devices such as TVs and wearables.”

For its part, IDC is estimating that worldwide PC shipments dropped 10.6% in the fourth quarter of 2015, which would mark the decline on record.

Overall, Gartner expects PC shipments to drop by 1% this year. Toward the end of the year, however, the research firm said a “soft recovery” in PC shipments is possible.

1 comment about "Can PCs Survive In A Mobile World?".
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  1. Justin Fogarty from BloomReach, January 13, 2016 at 3:06 p.m.

    I know PCs aren't as sexy as mobile, but the truth is they're still very, very important in e-commerce. I looked at holiday shopping data (our platform is pixeled on a number of large retail sites) and found that 68.2% of conversions took place on PCs (http://bloomreach.com/2015/12/mobile-vs-desktop-holiday-shopping/). Mobile and tablet landed 19.2% and 12.6% respectively. Of course traffic has increasingly grown for mobile. And the closer you get to Christmas Eve, the more mobile gains in terms of the number of product views. 

    But for all of the talk about desktop's demise, the numbers just aren't backing that up yet in terms of how consumers rely on them. Perhaps that will change. Only time will tell.

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