According to Gartner, second quarter PC sales in 2012 stood at 87.5 million units worldwide, which is actually a decline of 0.1 percent compared to the same period in 2011. “In the second quarter of 2012, the PC market suffered through its seventh consecutive quarter of flat to single-digit growth,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. The analyst is of the view that the reason behind all this is low consumer interest and uncertain economic climate across the globe. Mikako Kitagawa further went on to add that, “Despite the high expectations for the thin and light notebook segment, Ultrabooks, shipment volume was small and had little impact on overall shipment growth.” However, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa also said that another reason behind the fall in sale of PCs is that more people are now interested in buying tablets or smartphones. She said, “Consumers are less interested in spending on PCs as there are other technology products and services, such as the latest smartphones and media tablets that they are purchasing. This is more of a trend in the mature market as PCs are highly saturated in these markets.” “A big portion of R&D spending has been allocated to Ultrabook development, together with Intel’s massive investments to establish the market segment. Though Ultrabook was at first introduced in the market in 2011, the major promotion kicked off toward the end of 2Q12 with the IvyBridge, based Ultrabook release. This segment is still in an early adopter’s stage,” said Ms. Kitagawa.
