IDC cuts PC market forecast, blames everything

Tough year

Market researcher IDC has significantly reduced its forecast for the global PC market, citing reluctant consumers, a weak global economy and ‘competing products' - i.e. mobile devices - as the reasons.

Back in February IDC forecast global PC unit growth of 7.1 percent, but now it reckons we'll only see 4.2 percent growth. A rebound is expected in 2012, but there will probably be a ceiling of 10-11 percent until 2015.

IDC observed that during the recession years consumer PC sales were still pretty buoyant, but in retrospect this was high volume, low value products such as netbooks. This market now looks pretty saturated and, furthermore, is the one that has been most directly affected by tablets.

There is some compensating growth in enterprise, as stretched refresh cycles reach braking point, but not enough to keep growth at the levels previously experienced. The continued weakness of economies in Western Europe and North America isn't helping.

"Consumers are recognizing the value of owning and using multiple intelligent devices and because they already own PCs, they're now adding smart phones, media tablets, and eReaders to their device collections," said Bob O'Donnell, VP at IDC."And this has shifted the technology share of wallet onto other connected devices."

"The PC market has definitely hit a slow patch," said Loren Loverde, fellow IDC VP. "Nevertheless, the long-term growth drivers - first among which are growth in emerging markets, declining prices, and growing functionality - remain intact, and the product and design innovations underway will keep PC growth healthy in the long term."

Here are a couple of tables forecasting PC shipments by form factor and market, in units and percentage growth, respectively, until 2015. PCs include netbooks, but not tablets. Note the contraction in mature markets this year.

PC Shipments by Region and Form Factor, 2010-2015 (Shipments in millions)

PC Shipment Growth by Region and Form Factor, 2010-2015