14 DAY TRIAL // We already knew that desktops and even laptops had started to sell less and less, but there's nothing like a dry, quarterly marketing report to drive home the point, as one would drive a wooden stake through a vampire's heart.
Dramatics aside, though, we can tell exactly how much worse than last year shipments of PCs turned out in the third quarter of 2013.
Given that 2012 wasn't all that hot in terms of PC sales itself, this is hardly an encouraging development, but that's how things are.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), PC shipments reached 81.6 million in 3Q13, a figure that is 7.6% lower than the one in 3Q12. It's not as bad as the expected decline of 9.5%, but it's still pretty demoralizing.
Windows 8.1 is the only reason things didn't run out that badly, as it helped encourage sales during the month of September.
Lenovo, HP and Dell have even managed to grow their shipment levels on-year. Alas, the combined performance of everyone else neatly negated that ray of sunshine. Acer and ASUS are struggling particularly much.
"The third quarter was pretty close to forecast, which unfortunately doesn't reflect much improvement in the PC market, or potential for near-term growth," said Loren Loverde, vice president, Worldwide PC Trackers.
"Whether constrained by a weak economy or being selective in their tech investments, buyers continue to evaluate options and delay PC replacements. Despite being a little ahead of forecast, and the work that's being done on new designs and integration of features like touch, the third quarter results suggest that there's still a high probability that we will see another decline in worldwide shipments in 2014."
The US showed signs of recovery, and Japan did pretty well too, but the PC market in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) contracted (China isn't doing so hot), while APeJ (Asia/Pacific excluding Japan) suffered the expected 8.8% downturn.