Industry trackers on Wednesday reported that sales of traditional personal computers continued to wither in the recently ended quarter as tastes shifted to tablets.<\/p>\n
A total of 80.3 million personal computers were shipped worldwide in the third quarter of this year, an 8.6 percent drop from the same period in 2012, according to Gartner.<\/p>\n
It was the six consecutive quarter of decline for personal computer sales as buyers increasingly turn to tablet computers for accessing the Internet.<\/p>\n
“The third quarter is often referred to as the ‘back-to-school’ quarter for PC sales, and sales this quarter dropped to their lowest volume since 2008,” said Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa.<\/p>\n
“Consumers’ shift from PCs to tablets for daily content consumption continued to decrease the installed base of PCs both in mature as well as in emerging markets.”<\/p>\n
The trend is being heightened by expanding availability of economically-priced tablets powered by Google-backed Android software provide free to device makers by the California-based Internet titan, according to Gartner.<\/p>\n
Market figures released the same day by International Data Corporation pegged the year-over-year decline in the quarter at 7.6 percent in what was described as comparatively good news given that the drop in PC sales was forecast to be around nine percent.<\/p>\n
A slight rise in businesses buying computers and interest in machines powered by new Windows software improved sales somewhat, according to IDC.<\/p>\n
“Despite being a little ahead of forecast, and the work that’s being done on new designs and integration of features like touch, the third quarter results suggest there’s still a high probability that we will see another decline in worldwide shipments in 2014,” said IDC Worldwide PC Trackers vice president Loren Loverde.<\/p>\n
China’s Lenovo was the top PC maker, with a slight lead over US-based Hewlett Packard, according to Gartner and IDC.<\/p>\n
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