Services News South Africa

PC sales remain flat as tablet sales rise

Worldwide sales of personal computers fell 0.1% in the second quarter of the year as consumers bought newer gadgets like tablets, a survey showed Wednesday, 11 July 2012.

The quarterly report from research firm Gartner showed computer shipments, excluding tablet computers, totaled 87,5-million units in the second quarter of 2012, a small drop year-on-year.

"In the second quarter of 2012, the PC market suffered its seventh consecutive quarter of flat to single-digit growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, analyst at Gartner.

She said that despite high expectations for the thin and light notebook segment known as ultrabooks, this sector was small and had little impact on overall sales.

"Consumers are less interested in spending on PCs as there are other technology products and services, such as the latest smartphones and media tablets," she added.

"This is more of a trend in the mature market as PCs are highly saturated in these markets."

Hewlett-Packard continued to be the top PC seller with 14.9% market share even though its global shipments declined 12.1%.

Lenovo followed it at 14.7%, with Acer Group third, at 11% and Dell fourth at 10.7%.

Gartner said in a statement: "Lenovo's aggressive expansion damaged its competitor's performance, namely HP and Dell, by taking market share from them."

In the US, HP was on top with 25% of the market, followed by Dell at 21.7% and Apple at 12%.

A separate report last week by ABI Research said tablet computers are expected to overtake notebook PCs by 2016 as consumers shift to newer devices like the Apple iPad.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge.

Source: I-Net Bridge

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