Global PC Sales Continue Five-Year Slump

With a smartphone in every hand, smartwatch on every wrist, and digital assistant in every living room, PCs are going the way of the dinosaurs.

Worldwide shipments declined for the fifth consecutive year, totalling 260 million to 269.7 million units in 2016. That's based on data from IDC and Gartner.

Stagnation continued in the fourth quarter due to "generally weak" holiday sales, Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement, tipping a 3.7 percent decline over the end of 2015.

"This end of the market has grown fast, led by engaged PC users who put high priority on PCs," she continued. "However, the market driven by PC enthusiasts is not big enough to drive overall market growth."

A surge in personal computing may not be on the horizon, but stabilization is possible, according to IDC.

"The fourth quarter results reinforce our expectations for market stabilization, and even some recovery," Loren Loverde, vice president of personal computing trackers and forecasting at IDC, said.

The traditional PC recession since 2012 "finally appears to be giving way as users move to update systems," he added, predicting growth in commercial markets, as well as possible improvement in the consumer segment "as it feels less pressure from slowing phone and tablet markets."

Four of the top six vendors saw their global numbers increase in the fourth quarter, as reported by Gartner: Lenovo maintained its No. 1 position, and HP, Dell, and Apple experienced a boost; Asus and Acer, meanwhile, suffered, bringing down the whole group.

After an uptick in US shipments over the summer, IDC announced a slight decline during the final quarter, despite aggressive holiday promotions.

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"Although this might signal regained consumer confidence in the PC market," senior IDC research analyst Neha Mahajan said, "it needs to be seen how much of the real demand is carried forward in the coming quarters."

Gartner's Kitagawa agreed, adding that "There is the other side of the PC market, where PCs are infrequently used.

"Consumers in this segment have high dependency on smartphones, so they stretch PC life cycles longer," she said. "This side of the market is much bigger than the PC enthusiasts segment; thus, steep declines in the infrequent PC user market offset the faster growth of the PC enthusiast market."