After years of anxiety that PC sales would continue to be destroyed by the emergence of the smartphone, something unexpected has happened. PC shipments have started to recover and traditional PC sales have stabilized. Some of the credit goes to Windows XP upgrades, but the overall economy has played a role as well. Either way, the industry’s destruction has been halted, or at least delayed. The trend may not last more than a year or two, however. Smartphone sales continue to rise relentlessly.

According to research firm Gartner:

Worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are projected to reach 2.4 billion units in 2014, a 4.2 percent increase from 2013.

“2014 will be marked by a relative revival of the global PC market,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. After declining 9.5 percent in 2013, the global PC market (desk-based, notebook and premium ultramobile) is on pace to contract only 2.9 percent in 2014.

Then in 2015, Gartner forecasts, shipments will rise again to 2.6 billion. Next year, 316.7 million traditional PCs are forecast to be shipped, up from 308.5 million this year. This improvement comes as mobile phone sales lose some of their luster. Sales of these devices are expected to go from 1.863 billion this year to only 1.947 billion next. However, the mobile phone manufacturers can take some comfort that smartphone sales make up an ever larger portion of their market. And these smartphones usually have higher prices and better margins. Gartner reports:

Sales of mobile phones are expected to reach 1.9 billion units in 2014, a 3.1 percent increase from 2013. Sales of smartphones, which exceeded those of the rest of the market in 2013, will continue to do well, and Gartner estimates that smartphone sales will represent 88 percent of global mobile phone sales by 2018 — up from 66 percent in 2014.

The year 2018 may seem a long way away, and Gartner did not provide a forecast for PC sales then. But for these PC companies, 2018 will come too soon if they cannot figure out a way to blunt the customers that smartphones continue to steal from them. Upgrades to Windows XP and replacement of older machines will only last so long.

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