PC Sales Seen Falling

July 16, 2009 By Stephen Silver

multipage

Global shipments of PCs will drop this year for the first time in eight years, research firm iSuppli Corp. projected Tuesday. It would mark the first yearly drop since 2001, the year of the dot-com collapse.

iSuppli projected the number for 2009 at 287.3 million units, a 4 percent drop from 2008's total of 299.2 million. The firm attributed the likely drop to both weak sales of desktop computers and a decline in IT spending.

“An annual decline in unit shipments is highly unusual in the PC market,” iSuppli's principal analyst, compute platforms, Matthew Wilkins, said as part of the announcement. “Even in weak years, PC unit shipments typically rise by single-digit percentages."

iSuppli also projected that notebook sales will rise 11.7 percent this year to 155.97 million, the first time notebooks have overtaken desktops worldwide.