Canalys hails ray of light for PC market

Analyst says PC market will boom by nearly 10 per cent by 2017, but growth will be driven by tablets as desktop shipments slump

Market watcher Canalys has issued an unusually optimistic forecast for the PC market, predicting that rocketing demand for tablets will prop up sales over the coming years.

The analyst, which defines the PC market as including desktops, notebooks and tablets, claims global shipments of the latter will hike 25 per cent by 2017, with that of desktops and notebooks slumping by 4.9 per cent and 4.4 per cent respectively.

Overall, by 2017, the PC market will grow 9.7 per cent, it said.

By the end of this year, Canalys reckons tablets will take a 37 per cent share of the market, up from a quarter last year. It added that in 2013's Q1 alone, the tablet market doubled, with shipments reaching 41.9 million units.

Despite the high volumes of tablet sales, the analyst said the low margin means vendors ought to consider selling more lucrative accessories to bridge the shortfall.

Pin-Chen Tang, research analyst at Canalys, said: "Shipment numbers can be high but absolute margins on these products are expected to be small. Low-priced tablets will not be lucrative but it is necessary to compete or a vendor will simply lose relevance and scale.

"In fact, accessories, particularly cases, as well as the new generation of high-tech ‘appcessories' will likely provide higher margins than the products themselves."

Ray of light for PCs

Optimistic Canalys added that PC sales to businesses are, and will continue to be "far stronger" than of those to consumers, describing the trend as a "ray of light for PC vendors".

Windows 8 was once again blamed for not reinvigorating demand for PCs, but Canalys said the Windows 8.1 free upgrade would be a glimmer of hope for sales.

Tim Coulling, senior analyst, said: ‘Microsoft will continue to innovate. New versions will come and its OS release cycle will gain speed. But it must address some of the criticisms that have been directed at the OS's user interface or it risks losing even more ground to iOS and Android in the PC space."