PC Shipments Drop 10 Percent in 2013

Did you buy a new computer in 2013? World-wide personal-computer (PC) fell 10% last year, according to reports released by research firms Gartner Inc. and IDC on Thursday. This means that 2013 was the worst-ever sales slump for the PC industry. Both companies have been tracking personal computer sales since the 1980s, so this is significant news for the PC industry. Computer makers have been taking a beating as consumers and businesses spend more time on smartphones and tablets these days and there is not a significant reason for them to replace aging PCs. It looks like PC shipments were just over 82 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, which is down from the 87.0 million PCs in the same quarter from the previous year. This represents a 5.6 percent year-on-year loss. For the year it looks like around 314.6 million PC shipments were made in 2013 versus 349.4 million in the previous year. This is a drop of 10 percent!

Most system vendors took a rather large drops in sales, but somehow Lenovo was able to increase sales and market share in 2013! Lenovo saw a 2.7% increase in worldwide sales, with a very impressive 17.5% increase in sales in the United States.

PC makers are hopeful that 2014 will be better as there is increased demand for new types of computers( laptops with touch, “two-in-one” devices and hybrid computers that run two operating systems (Android and Windows for example). There has also been the release of Windows 8.1, which will hopefully bring back some of the people that were scared off after seeing how many things Microsoft changed in Windows 8. For 2014, Gartner estimates sales of 318 million PCs and two-in-one devices, essentially unchanged from 2013 sales. It will be interesting to see how the year turns out, but the PC makers are wanting to see growth again, but the analysts are predicting modest increases. At least both sides are no longer predicting any decreases in PC shipments in 2014.