Probable Effects of Declining PC Sales on the Global IT Industry

In January 2013, Gartner finally confirmed what many in the IT industry have suspected for most of 2012 – The PC is the IT dinosaur heading towards extinction. Indeed, recently released figures of PC sales, which included desktops, laptops and mini-notebooks for 2012 reveal that their overall sales have declined by almost 5% in just the fourth quarter of 2012. Claims that the weakness in Western economies resulted in the declining numbers is no longer viewed as a sufficient explanation for this. In fact, analysts are finally confirming that this trend is sustainable and the PC market will continue to gradually decline in 2013 as they are slowly replaced by tablets and smart phones both in offices as well as within the house.

This projected decline is definitely a compelling bit of evidence regarding the shifting tastes as users as well as the continued proliferation of IT throughout the industry. A majority of the users, if possible, no longer want to use their desktops, instead more of them are opting to work with much smaller devices such as smart phones and tablets. Other factors, which contributed significantly to the shifting tastes included an expansion in the availability of high speed wireless data plans capable of providing users with anytime-anywhere connectivity. This proliferation is no longer limited to the urban areas, it is spreading slowly to rural regions, where the new range of mobility devices are becoming the device of choice for field workers operating from remote areas. No wonder mobile apps and mobile-only application development is increasing among leading Software Development Companies.

The traditional PC is still however expected to continue in offices and in many homes to as the smaller devices still have major drawbacks, which need to rectified, before iPhones, iPads and various low-cost Android devices takeover the world. However, new PC sales will continue to decline every quarter in 2013 as newer devices capable of performing a wider range of functions within a compact form factor continue to be favored by a wide range of users. In the coming years, more and more basic configuration PCs will continue to be replaced by tablets and related devices, however, the silver lining for PC vendors and manufacturers is that PCs with higher configurations will continue to endure for the foreseeable future. Due to this, average price of PC shipments are expected to witness a continue increasing in 2013 and beyond. Thus Custom Software Development as well as enterprise solution businesses of Offshore Software Development companies would witness increased pricing pressures in the recent futures.

It might have shocked the folks at Microsoft, but Windows 8 wasn’t much of a success either. The new OS definitely received a relatively frigid reception during the 2012 holiday season and the surface tablets also weren’t very successful. Both the ARM-powered and Intel chip powered devices running the Windows 8 platform were unable to dent the share of iPads and other Android-based devices during the last quarter of 2012. The availability of very few useful apps in the Windows App store has also been a key barrier to popularity and usability of the new OS. Definitely an area, which will see many companies outsource software development requirements for the new OS to leading offshore software development centers globally.

The details of comparison between leading PC vendors such as HP, Lenovo and Dell revealed that their shipment of new PC had not grown significantly during the final quarter of 2012, even though Lenovo did witness an overall growth rate in excess of 8% during the year 2012. However, the growth of even Lenovo in terms of PC segments was limited to mainly the developing countries, while US PC shipments declined during the same period. In conclusion the only things that can be expected for certain is another step in that the status quo currently prevailing in the global IT market will not continue and major disruptive influences of changing perceptions and changing requirements loom on the horizon.

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