PC Shipments to Fall in 2014

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 5, 6:36AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

According to new research, PC shipments will fall 6% in 2014, and the decline will continue through 2018. The “death of the PC” may be an exaggeration. However, companies that rely on PC sales will continue to be troubled.

In a new report, research firm IDC said it expects PC shipments to fall by 6% in 2014 and decline through 2018.

The drop in emerging markets will be from 182 million sales last year to 172 million in 2018. In mature markets, the number is forecast to drop from 133 million to 120 million over the same period.

Worldwide, desktop sales are expected to fall from 137 million to 119 million from 2013 to 2018. Portable sales are expected to fall from 178 million to 123 million. In sum, all PC sales are expected to drop from 315 million to 291 million over that period.

Any hope that emerging markets might help global PC sales has been lost for the time being:

“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.”

Many forecasters believe that the smartphone will eventually kill the PC. That has not happened so far, but the IDC data indicate the process is well underway.

PC Shipments by Region and Form Factor, 2013 – 2018 (Shipments in millions)

Region	Form Factor	2013	2014*	2018*
Emerging Markets	Desktop PC	85.6	80.5	77.2
Emerging Markets	Portable PC	96.2	87.2	94.5
Emerging Markets	Total PC	181.9	167.7	171.7

Mature Markets	Desktop PC	51.1	48.6	42.0
Mature Markets	Portable PC	82.2	79.6	77.9
Mature Markets	Total PC	133.3	128.2	120.0

Worldwide	Desktop PC	136.7	129.1	119.2
Worldwide	Portable PC	178.4	166.8	172.5
Worldwide	Total PC	315.1	295.9	291.7

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarter PC Tracker, February 2014

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.