 "Tablets not killing PCs after all; market grows by 1.9 percent")
The year 2011 has been really bad for PCs. There have been a number of problems PC manufacturers have been facing. Firstly, it was the onslaught of the tablets and smartphones, which became the preferred product to purchase for everyone. Then, there were the Thailand floods that affected people and also the hard drive industry. Prices of hard drives shot through the roof and things have only recently started to get better. Prices are expected to drop further over the months to come. The early signs are looking good as per Gartner. The PC market has seen a 1.9 percent in the first quarter of this year over the past year.
PCs fight back!
Some 89 million PCs were sold in the first quarter of this year. Most of the sales happened in the European and Middle East regions, while Asia and Indian markets didn’t help in the boost in performance as much. Earlier predictions state a decline of the PC market, but things have actually improved. HP continues to be the market leader, followed by Lenovo and Dell. Lenovo saw a major growth as its market share grew by some 28 percent. The research by Gartner, included desktops, notebooks, netbooks but not tablets.
The market is only going to improve as Ultrabooks will starting moving in larger numbers as Intel launches its Ivy Bridge platform. Ultrabooks are expected to see major benefits as the new platform releases. There is also Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system that is expected to launch for PCs and tablets in the later part of the year. This should help boost the PC market further. Gartner also expects the Indian PC market to swell by 17 percent, this year. The Tamil Nadu government is expected to give away laptops to students, which should add upto 9,20,000 shipments this year. This deal by itself is expected to grow the market by 8.4 percent. Ultrabooks may not be a very convincing product for the Indian market when they take off big time. This is due to the current, somewhat higher pricing as compared to standard notebooks.
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