After good relatively results last quarter, the numbers have turned ugly again for the personal computer industry with both IDC and Gartner estimating the sector’s sales have collapsed by 11% and 9.5% respectively.
Of the PC manufacturers Taiwan’s Acer is the hardest hit with Gartner forecasting a 20% drop and IDC a whopping one-quarter compared to last year.
Apple were the only bright spot with Gartner expecting the company to sell 16% more PCs than the previous year.
Lenovo remain the biggest global supplier of personal computers but the company suffered a six percent drop.
While it appears the end of Windows XP support gave the sector a reprieve last year, the end of the PC era is well and truly here. The key aim now for vendors is to find a way to shore up their margins as the market shrinks – it’s a bad time to be commodity player.