According to Gartner WW PC shipments for 2012 will total 368M units with 4.4% Y-o-Y growth, as the PC market remains weak in the face of variable economic and consumer dynamics.
"2011 redefined the landscape of the device market," Gartner says. Users are replacing PCs with tablets and smartphones, prefering such devices to access traditional PC applications such as e-mail, social networking and the internet.
Consumers will also make more use of personal cloud services-- challenging vendors even further.
Weakening the PC market further are economic and supply issues, even if Gartner says the change in consumer dynamics is a far greater issue.
The analyst expects ultrabooks to make waves-- or at least garner attention-- in H2 2012, together with the Windows 8 launch. Will the combination of different laptop format and new OS get the early adopters excited about PCs again? Perhaps, but replacements will continue driving mature PC markets (such as W. Europe), and as a result shipments will remain low.
Gartner predicts emerging markets will instead by "key" to driving both long- and short-term WW PC growth. According to the analyst, emerging markets make 50% of 2011 global PC shipments-- a figure set to reach nearly 70% by 2016.