The PC market goes down, but Windows 8 won’t help too much

Sep 21, 2012 09:06 GMT  ·  By

The PC market’s collapse continues and retailers struggle to clear their Windows 7-based inventories, as Windows 8 is only one month away.

Market researcher IDC believes that Windows 8 won’t manage to revive the PC market anytime soon, as many customers aren’t willing to make the move to the new operating system.

The PC market will recover only 0.9 points after the Windows 8 launch, but things are very likely to change in 2013. On the other hand, consumers spend more on other products, including tablets and smartphones, so Microsoft’s Windows Phones and Surface tablets could actually be a hit.

"The U.S. market will remain depressed until Windows 8 products hit the shelves in the fourth quarter of 2012. The industry is responding by reducing shipments of PCs and clearing Windows 7-based inventories to pave the way for a new generation of systems,” said David Daoud, research director, Personal Computing at IDC.

Demand for new computers will continue to drop in the third quarter, ahead of Windows 8’s debut, while shipments in the United States will go down in the last months of the year too.

“The third-quarter back to school season is also proving to be a challenging period, despite prices dropping to their lowest levels. We expect the year will end with shipments in the U.S. falling by 3.7%, marking the second consecutive year of contraction,” Daoud added.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, on the other hand, believes that Windows 8 will revitalize the PC market and millions of copies are to be sold from the first months of availability.

“There's going to be close to 400 million PCs sold in the next year, which makes it a big market. And whether it's 405 (million) or 395 (million), it's a big market, and Windows 8 will propel that volume,” he told The Seattle Times in an interview.