Notebook fears prompt Gartner U-turn

Research house slashes PC growth forecasts as it warns consumer love affair with notebooks is over

Gartner has slashed its 2011 PC growth forecast from 15.9 to 10.5 per cent amid concerns that consumer mobile growth is slowing down.

The market watcher performed a U-turn this morning by admitting consumers were "losing their enthusiasm" for the form factor that has been the growth engine of the PC market over the past five years.

Gartner said the proliferation of alternative internet-enabled mobile devices, including the iPad, had effectively negated the need among consumers for mobile PCs.

As a result of this – combined with concerns about softness in the Chinese market – Gartner has chopped its forecast for 2011 PC shipments growth from 15.9 to 10.5 per cent. It has also slightly downgraded its 2012 growth forecast, from 14.8 to 13.6 per cent.

George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, said that media tablets would displace, rather than complement, notebooks in the consumer market.

"We once thought that mobile PC growth would continue to be sustained by consumers buying second and third mobile PCs as personal devices," he said.

"However, we now believe that consumers are not only likely to forgo additional mobile PC buys, but are also likely to extend the lifetimes of the mobile PCs they retain as they adopt media tablets and other mobile PC alternatives as their primary mobile device."

Gartner now expects home mobile PCs to average less than 10 per cent annual growth in mature markets until 2015, Shiffler added.