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Bad news for the computer industry. According to market research company Gartner, PC shipments will plummet nearly 12 percent in 2009, recording the worst decline the industry has ever seen. This even after contracting sales in emerging markets for the first time.
"The PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions as the global economy continues to weaken, users stretch PC lifetimes, and PC suppliers grow increasingly cautious," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.
The 12 percent free fall translates into 257 million computers expected to be sold, but its even worse for desktops, whch are expected to slide a staggering 32 percent from last year. Laptops, meanwhile, are expected to go up by 9 percent, no doubt the result of strong netbook sales, a sector that had been keeping the worldwide PC market growing up to this point.
Image Credit: InsideSoCal.com
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Sonickid101
March 03, 2009 at 8:48pm
Best Buy only started selling apples in march of 08' yet theres computers with CRT monitors still attatched to them in this picture. And i'm seeing no slowdown of PC's being sold at Best Buy although that could be because CompUSA, Circuit, and Tweeter are all out of the picture.
archangelx
March 03, 2009 at 1:56pm
I believe I am in for a lot of work as a computer technician as fars as upgrades, repairs and maintenance.
Keith E. Whisman
March 03, 2009 at 10:32am
I suspect that Software and Hardware that is relatively cheap that enhances and increases the performance of computers will increase in sales as people will be unwilling to buy new computers. Remember the old upgrade processors that had clock generators and voltage circuits built into the processor sandwitch? I remember the old 486 to Pentium 90 upgrade processor sandwitch. It was pretty cool..
smashingpumpin
March 04, 2009 at 7:17am
So True. Besides recession, I think this was a cause of more and
more people that are now knowledgable of "upgrading" their own PCs that
results to fewer new PC's bought. Not to mention many are now literate
of the darkside of buying OEMs, its loads of bloatware, proprietary
hardware hampering upgrades and its added price compared to a cheaper
DIY PC.What amuses me in todays economy are those dozens of
boutique, high-priced PC vendors that are still striving. The 3, 4
even, digit price added on top of high end components is just plain
ridiculous. I bet if I were rich, I'd still build my own PC, have the
same hardware and configuration compared to a boutique OEM's and still
save a lot of cash. Hmm... though on second thought I could be wrong
and just buy a fully built micro LHC PC with warranty to boot so I
could worry about other things like: not making even more money, not getting Bill G to clean my toilet, not getting to do body paints on all models for a day in an SI Swimsuit photoshoot and so on...._______________________________________________
...and what does this have to do with porn?
Wareagle
March 03, 2009 at 4:34pm
I've also noticed that as computers get cheaper, manufacturers sacrifice things like complementary installations of Microsoft Office and antivirus software (they used to give you lifetime updates, then a year, and now it's a 60-day trial), US-based technical support, and even cheap stuff like recovery CDs.
I mean come on, it costs, what, 5 cents to make a recovery DVD? And they can't even spare that! They have to use up space on your hard drive for a recovery partition- which I've seen rendered useless by malware.
Other casualties just don't make any sense. For example, I used to love Linksys routers because they used open-source Linux firmware that could be modded. But then they switched over to VXWorks- not to protect their intellectual property, but so they could squeeze the firmware down to 8MB so they could give you less memory! In the days of $10 2GB flash drives, how much could they stand to save?
