PC sales dropped nearly 10% last year but the Gartner analysts believes businesses that waited til’ the absolute end of XP should see those numbers begin to flatten out as businesses look to upgrade their machines.
PC sales: What a difference a year makes
“Business upgrades from Windows XP and the general business replacement cycle will lessen the downward trend, especially in Western Europe,” says Atwal in a statement. “This year, we anticipate nearly 60 million professional PC replacements in mature markets.”
Atwal believes that the drop in sales will be just under 3% compared to the near 10% last year.
“2014 will be marked by a relative revival of the global PC market,” he says. The total sales will be 570 million worldwide. Those numbers include desktops, notebook and premium ultra-movile devices. If one looks at just desktops and laptops rather than mobile devices like tablets and Windows phones the decline in sales will still be 6.7% for 2014 and 5.3% for 2015.
PC sales: Overall operating system use
When taken in the aggregate Android is the clear leader in operating systems when desktops, laptops, tablets and phones are all counted together. Android will see total sales of 48% while Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), owing to traditional computers, will see sales of 13.7% and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iOS/Mac OS accounting for 11.1%
Smaller screen tablet sales are slowing with a higher demand for “phablets” in Southeast Asia. Each of the aforementioned operating systems are growing while taking away from others notably Linux systems. According to Atwal, next year Android will dominate with 52.8% compared to Windows at 14.4% and Apple at 11.6%. Other operating systems will see their share drop from 27.1% this year to 21% in 2015.
He also expects to see more and more people adopting Windows phones now that Microsoft has acquired the handset division of Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V). “Windows phones will exhibit strong growth from a low base in 2014, and are projected to reach a 10 percent market share by 2018 — up from 4 percent in 2014,” Atwal says.
