So Intel’s Paul Otellini was right after all – PC sales should rise this year, according to the Gartner research firm, despite the recession.
At the Intel Developer Forum in September, the chipmaker’s chief executive said he thought the market was poised for resurgence and PC units could be flat to slightly up in 2009.
Today Gartner changed its forecast from September’s 2 per cent decline in shipments to a 2.8 per cent increase on 2008.
In September, Gartner said it would take an exceptionally strong second half for Mr Otellini’s prediction to come true, and this was “possible but…not likely.”
Gartner had predicted an 11.9 per cent fall in shipments earlier in the year.
Clearly, Intel, with its processors featuring in four out of five PCs sold, would have seen signs of recovery sooner – it can judge shipments by demand for its chips from PC makers as they ramp up for the holiday selling season.
“Shipments in the third quarter of 2009 were much stronger than we expected, and that alone virtually guaranteed we would see positive growth this year,” said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.
“We’re anticipating seasonally modest growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, but because shipments were so weak in the fourth quarter of 2008, growth will appear quite strong. This could lull vendors and market watchers into thinking the market is recovering faster than it really is.”
The other statistics of caution in the Gartner report are that, while units shipped may rise, revenues should fall around 10.7 per cent on 2008.
Mr Schiffler said there had been unprecedented declines in average selling prices this year, with consumers looking for “good enough” PCs and vendors catering to ever-lower price points.
Gartner expects the global PC market to be worth $217bn this year and $222.9bn in 2010 – a 2.6 per cent increase as average selling prices remain low.
In contrast, it expects 2010 shipments to increase 12.6 per cent from 298.9m units to 336.6m.
Gartner expects Windows 7 to have a limited impact on holiday PC sales and only expects business to shift to the new operating system in significant numbers in the back end of 2010.
Mobile PC units are expected to increase to 162m units in 2009, up 15.4 per cent, helped by the popularity of netbooks. They are a bigger category than desktop PCs now, where shipments are expected to fall 9 per cent to 137m units.
