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.