The PC business might not be dying, but it's not flourishing either, according to a report by the IDC, with shipments of desktop systems are expected to fall by 7.8 per cent this year, the biggest decline in the platform's history.
Last month, the IDC released its latest quarterly report, stating that the PC market had slumped a record 13.9 percent in the previous quarter, before further stating that PC shipments this year would decrease by 1.9 percent.
"The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomenon has moved from smartphones to tablets and PCs, with nearly 25 percent of employees in organizations larger than 10 people claiming to have purchased the primary PC they use for work," said IDC's Bob O'Donnell. "This means that some of the corporate PC purchases we expected this year will no longer happen."
Laptops aren't immune though to the decline. The IDC predicts that tablets will outsell laptops this year, and that by 2015 the fondleslab will be king of all computer shipments, with a surge in the numbers of Android systems outpacing those of tablet market-maker Apple.
"What started as a sign of tough economic times has quickly shifted to a change in the global computing paradigm with mobile being the primary benefactor," said Ryan Reith, program manager for IDC's Mobility Trackers.
"Tablets surpassing portables in 2013, and total PCs in 2015, marks a significant change in consumer attitudes about compute devices and the applications and ecosystems that power them," he said. "IDC continues to believe that PCs will have an important role in this new era of computing, especially among business users. But for many consumers, a tablet is a simple and elegant solution for core use cases that were previously addressed by the PC."
