 "Meeker report brings more bad news for PCs")
The future for the home PC culture may be a bit bleaker as alternative forms of competition see a rise in demand, according to a recent Mary Meeker report. According to a FoxBusiness report, IDC had earlier said that there will be a significant slump in the estimated global PC shipments in 2013. The reason: a visible consumer shift towards tablets and smartphones. According to the data collected, there has been a projected PC sales decline of 7.8 percent to the 321.9 million shipments this year, which is much greater than the earlier reported IDC outlook of a 1.3 percent decline. Next year, according to IDC, shipments are expected to slide 1.2 percent more.
In comparison, tablet shipments will likely surpass portable PCs this year, with tablet sales likely to all PCs sales by 2015. This will likely be supplemented by dropping selling prices for a tablet in the market, which should see an expected 10.8 percent fall in 2013, while shipments will keep rising an estimated 59 percent to 229.3 million.
Tablets may be more of a threat to PC’s then earlier estimated (image credit: foxnews)
This shift is to be expected as consumer behaviors change. Users now want all the features that PC’s originally boasted, and they want easy access wherever they might be. Technological advances in services like the Cloud will also help facilitate this shift.
A prime example of this, according to the new data found via the
Mary Meeker report, shows a rise in the popularity and resultant sales of the Apple iPad. According to the data seen so far, the iPad culture is growing three times as fast as the iPhone, with global shipments reaching the 140 million mark in terms of sales since launch.
In the first quarter of 2013, around 50 million tablets were shipped out and have been seen surpassing the total global desktop and notebook shipments. In comparison, in 2011 the total Notebook shipments topped out at more than 55 million per month, while it was seen that PC shipments peaked in 2007 at more than 40 million per month. This has since, been seen slowing down. In the tablet market, Apple commands 51percent of the market share while Samsung has 13 percent of the total market share.
According to the data that has been gathered from online social media sites like Facebook, the average revenue per user (ARPU) has also started to reflect this. While the ARPU that Facebook saw from its desktop access stagnated at $4 (Rs 224 approx), it saw its mobile ARPU growing.
While this data seems to show a marked shift in the way the consumer thinks, there is no clear indication that the PC market is in any state of apathy just yet. Forecasters with the Economist have predicted that PC’s will globally sell 350 million to 360 million units. This shows a slow but steady rate of growth. While tablets allow you a great deal of portability, and on-the-go access to your data, PC’s, with their wide screens, keyboards and direct access to the Internet still have a lot of uses, and many PC gamer loyalists will actively set up picket fences against such proclamations. Be that as it may, the shift in consumer behavior reflects a clear change in the way users think, and what they expect from their gadgets.
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