Global PC shipments will increase less than previously predicted this year and next year as consumers curb spending, research firm Gartner Inc said.
Shipments will rise 3.8 percent to 352 million units this year, compared with an earlier projection of 9.3 percent, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company said on its Web site on Thursday.
Shipments will probably increase 10.9 percent next year, compared with an earlier forecast of 12.8 percent, Gartner said.
“An increasing pessimistic economic outlook is causing both consumer and business sentiment to deteriorate” in the US and Western Europe, Ranjit Atwal, who is a research director at Gartner, said in the statement.
Younger consumers are not buying PCs as their first or main device, Atwal said.
Tablets and mobile devices have cut into PC demand, and Hewlett-Packard Co’s possible sale or spinoff of its PC division shows the traditional business models are failing, said George Shiffler, also a research director at Gartner.
Gartner’s latest statistics showed Acer Inc (宏碁) fell to the fourth ranking in PC sales globally during the April-to-June period from second place during the same period last year with its market share down to 10.9 percent from 14 percent.
Gartner said Acer’s shipments to Europe, which accounted for more than 30 percent of the company’s total, fell 44.6 percent from a year earlier.
The Taiwanese company reported a worse-than-expected second quarter, registering NT$6.79 billion in net loss with a loss per share of NT$2.57 after a one-time write-off worth US$150 million (NT$4.35 billion) to clear its inventory in its Europe, Middle East and Africa operations.
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