The PC industry will see a decline of nearly 12% in 2009, analysts predict.
It would be only the second period of negative growth in the industry, after a slump of 3.2% in 2002.
The news follows an announcement that the semiconductor industry saw a 35% drop in sales of computer chips between 2008 and 2009.
However, analysts say the chip industry will weather the global economic storm better and rebound faster than the rest of the technology
sector.
“The outside economic situation that we’ve seen deteriorating over the last few quarters is now directly affecting the PC
market and we’re going to see growth slump over the next year,” said Ranjit Atwal, principal research analyst at Gartner.
The shift in the health of the market was a sharp one. European PC sales were at 20% in the third quarter of 2008; the fourth quarter
saw a dive to just 4%.
In 2009, Gartner predicts, those numbers will plummet into the negative. They say that the global market will see 257 million PCs sold
in 2009, a downward slide of 11.9% on 2008.
