Crushing sales of smartphones and tablets still killing PC business

The PC is dying a slow death, despite somewhat better than expected shipment numbers from the research firm IDC.

The company reported that for 2013 worldwide PC shipments were down 9.3 percent to 315.1 million and the slide will continue through 2018. This is the largest contraction in the PC business on record. IDC originally expected shipments to fall 10.1 percent. The expected number of shipments was also lowered for this year by 2 percent with a total of 295.9 now expected. By 2018 only 291.7 million PCs will ship.

There are multiple culprits behind the decline. IDC cited the usual suspects of the smartphone and tablet grabbing consumer dollars, but this was compounded by on-going weak economic conditions in emerging markets and the fact that they too have reached a saturation point. Microsoft's planned abandonment of the XP operating system in April could give a small boost to shipments as consumers finally decide to upgrade these aging sytems, but this will not be enough to alter the categories demis.

"Emerging markets used to be a core driver of the PC market, as rising penetration among large populations boosted overall growth," said Loren Loverde, Vice President, Worldwide PC Trackers. "At the moment, however, we're seeing emerging regions more affected by a weak economic environment as well as significant shifts in technology buying priorities. We do expect these regions to recover in the medium term and perform better than mature regions, but growth is expected to stabilize near zero percent, rather than driving increasing volumes as we saw in the past."

Although laptops had managed to fend off declines for several years in the face of the onslaught of tablets, these have joined their desktop cousins in decline. However, there will be a minor uptick down the road. IDC expects 166.8 million to ship this year, but the number will jump to 172.5 million by 2018.

The desktop trend does not have any such brightspot. Worldwide 136.7 million desktops shipping last year, this will drop to 129.1 million this year and taper to 119.2 million by 2018.

Source: IDC