Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner say that 'These results reflect marked reductions in expected near-term unit growth based on expectations of weaker consumer demand, due in no small part to growing user interest in media tablets such as the iPad. Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10 percent of PC units by 2014.'
'PC market growth will be impacted by devices that enable better on-the-go content consumption such as media tablets and next-generation smartphones,' said Raphael Vasquez, research analyst at Gartner. 'These devices will be increasing embraced as complements if not substitutes for PCs where voice and light data consumption are desired. It is likely that desk-based PCs will be adversely impacted over the long-term by the adoption of hosted virtual desktops, which can readily use other devices like thin clients.'
'PCs are still seen as necessities, but the PC industry's inability to significantly innovate and its over-reliance on a business model predicated on driving volume through price declines are finally impacting the industry's ability to induce new replacement cycles,' said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.
Gartner's analysts suggests that there are five dynamics challenging the PC industry.
Emerging markets will gain more than 50 percent of the total worldwide PC market by the end of 2011 but mature markets will face mounting challenges. The bad news, according to Gartner, is that consumers in emerging markets will simply leap frog PCs and move directly to alternative devices rather than following the traditional pattern of purchasing a PC as their first computing device.
Home mobile PCs in mature markets are expected to be significantly weaker as consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe postpone purchases in the face of financial and economic uncertainty. However, Gartner said that the bigger issue for PCs in the home market is consumers forgoing PC purchases in favour of media tablets.
Media tablets expected to become more PC-like, displacing a significant volume of PC shipments, especially mini-notebooks. Media tablets are rapidly finding favour with PC buyers who are attracted to their entertainment-driven features and instant-on capability.
New types of devices will have an important indirect impact on PCs - the extension of average PC lifecycles. As traditional PC functionality is spread between a variety of complementary devices analysts foresee users extending the lifetimes of PCs as there will be less need to replace them as often.
Hosted virtual desktops (HVDs) are not expected to impact mature professional markets until 2012 but users that adopt HVDs to access their compute capabilities will do so predominantly by using older PCs and thin clients. These alternative devices will displace new PC units, thereby reducing expected future desk-based shipment growth.
