PC market freefall to continue, as demand for tablets and Ultrabooks soars

Market watcher Gartner continues to paint a bleak picture for the future of PCs, with its latest round of forecasts suggesting the market will continue to decline well into 2014.

The analyst predicts the total number of PCs, tablets and mobile phones shipped worldwide this year will total 2.35 billion, which is up 5.9 per cent on 2012.

This growth is expected to be fuelled by the ongoing demand for tablets and mobile phones, with Gartner predicting year-on-year shipment growth of 67.9 per cent and 4.3 per cent, respectively, for both device types.

In total, Gartner said it expects 202 million tablets and 1.8 billion mobiles to be shipped this year across the globe.

Meanwhile, PC shipments are expected to top 305 million units this year, down 10.6 per cent on 2012.

The demand for tablets and mobiles looks likely to offset the decline in PC sales for some time to come, although Gartner predicts both will account for around 11 per cent of all devices sold by 2014.

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said the figures point to the fact consumers in all markets want an "anytime-anywhere" computing experience.

"Consumers want...computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products," she added.

To this end, Gartner predicts demand for ultramobile devices, such as Ultrabooks and Chromebooks, will increase over time and eat into sales of other devices, as consumers upgrade their notebooks and tablets.

This trend is expected to pick up pace in the fourth quarter of 2013, once new designs featuring Intel's Bay Trail and Haswell processors drop.

In the tablet and smartphone market, the analyst said consumers are downgrading from premium devices to more basic designs, characterised by the likes of the iPad Mini, which reportedly accounted for 60 per cent of the iOS tablets sold during Q1 2013.

Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, said this is a trend that will continue to gather momentum as the range of lower priced basic tablets grows.

"The increased availability of lower priced basic tablets, plus the value add shifting to software rather than hardware will result in the lifetimes of premium tablets extending as they remain active in the household for longer. We will also see consumer preferences split between basic tablets and ultramobile devices," Atwal added.