Gartner forecasts decline in PC shipments in 2016

In year 2015, the global PC shipments declined by 8.3% to a total of 75.7 million units. In the third quarter of 2016, the fall was 5.7% according to Gartner. The PC market is expected to fall by 8% in 2016 too and would regain its growth in the coming years, Gartner noted. A continuous fall for eight quarters has given tough time for PC vendors. One of the culprit is smartphone for this fall. People do not need a PC for internet browsing, mailing and social networking when they have a smartphone. Even those people who own a PC are not keen to upgrade for the lack of significant performance boost after upgradation. Also cost of performance packed PCs are not that affordable. "The global devices market is not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "The effect of currency depreciation on the market is diminishing," added Mr. Atwal. "The second quarter of 2016 was the first since the second quarter of 2015 least impacted by currency depreciation." Business needs to regain its position by addressing the market requirements. "We expect premium ultra mobiles will start benefiting from the collective performance and integration of the latest Intel CPU platform and Windows 10," added Mr. Atwal. When we look at the rankings of the PC, Apple iMac ranked higher in 2016 according to some of the online analysis. Some pe...