14 DAY TRIAL // Analysts are always looking at what will be and what was, and sometimes their conclusions aren't all that encouraging. What IHS iSuppli found out about the mobile PC market is definitely less than encouraging.
Not disastrous, exactly, since it's been known for a while that consumer interest in PCs has been waning.
Still, even after analysts factored that into their predictions, said predictions still ended up failing to be met.
Which is to say, worldwide shipments of mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2013 amounted to 52.6 million.
That's a 9.4% rise compared to the 48.1 million of the third quarter, but a lot less than the 55.3 million that everyone in the industry had been hoping for.
Still, 9.4% is, nonetheless, the greatest quarterly increase since the fourth quarter of 2009, so laptop makers should probably count their blessings.