14 DAY TRIAL // Despite Microsoft’s aggressive push for Windows 10 adoption, sales of new PCs are expected to continue their decline this year, according to a forecast from Gartner.
The analyst firm says the PC market is predicted to decline from 288 million sold units to 265 million this year, before eventually starting the recovery next year. PC sales should grow to 266 million units in 2017 and continue growing to 274 million in 2018.
As a result, the PC market is likely to experience an 8 percent decline this year, with Gartner saying that “the installed base bottoms out and replacement cycle extensions halt.” This means that starting next year, sales of new PCs should be back to growth.
“The effect of currency depreciation on the market is diminishing. The second quarter of 2016 was the first since the second quarter of 2015 least impacted by currency depreciation,” Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, explained.
Consequences of the Brexit vote
The firm explains that the Brexit vote had a significant impact on new PC sales and computer pricing increased substantially in several European markets. “They will ‘de-feature’ their PCs to keep prices down. With these changes, Gartner expects PC prices in the UK to increase by less than 10 percent in 2017,” Gartner added.
The good news for Microsoft is that the existing inventories of Windows 8.1 PCs are almost cleared out, so most retailers will soon move to Windows 10 for the computers they sell. Furthermore, new hardware will only support Windows 10, so adoption of the new operating system is very likely to grow in the coming months and years.
Microsoft had a goal of bringing Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by FY2018, but this goal is unlikely to be achieved, the company recently admitted. The transition from previous Windows versions to Windows 10 takes more time, especially in the case of enterprises, but sooner or later, this milestone will still be reached, Redmond guarantees.