Gartner has revised its forecast for device shipments and now expects device markets to grow by 2.0% in 2018, an improvement over the last two years. The company quoted its online end-user survey as highlighting that users depend just as much on PCs or tablets as they do on smartphones. Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner said,
“Forty percent of respondents said that they use mostly a PC/tablet for certain daily experiences, such as reading and writing detailed emails or watching videos, while 34 percent mostly use a smartphone for its convenience while on the move. Users holding onto their PCs for longer remains a major issue for the PC market. In contrast, users continue to replace their smartphone quite frequently.”
However, there will be a continued shift to the use of Ultramobiles and as a result, the computing device market will decline very slightly overall, while the traditional desktop PC market is forecast to decline by 4%. Although consumers will move to other devices, business PC users are expected to buy 0.8% more PCs in 2018 because of the move to Windows 10. The growth will also be helped by the continued recovery in Russia, which has seen PC growth of 5% in 2017. China will also be a factor as the move to Windows 10 has been delayed in that region as Microsoft is developing a government-approved version. The Chinese government is also keen to switch to ultramobile devices rather than PCs and notebooks.
Gartner is also positive about smartphone volumes being maintained and even growing in North America, China and Western Europe because of the Apple iPhone X, despite the high price.
Component shortages are likely to restrict some device shipments in Q4 of 2017, and that volume may move over to early 2018.The shortages may also affect the ability of vendors to offer special promotions at the end of 2017.
