Device shipments to grow 1.9% in 2016, but user spend will fall

Combined global shipments of PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones will grow 1.9% to 2.4 billion units this year, but user spending on computing hardware will drop by 0.5% for the first time, according to the latest market predictions from Gartner.

Looking ahead at the next 12 months, Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said the device market would continue to be affected by various country-level economic conditions.

“It’s clear that vendors can no longer market their products with the aim of only targeting mature and emerging markets,” said Atwal.

“Driven by economic variations, the market is splitting into four categories: Economically challenged mature markets, economically stable mature markets, and the same for emerging markets. Russia and Brazil will fall into the category of economically challenged emerging markets, while India will be stable, and Japan will belong to the economically challenged mature market.”

Gartner did, however, forecast a return to revenue growth for the PC market in the next 18 months, with the 1% fall this year expected to be more than offset by a 4% rise in 2017.

This, said Atwal, was down to growth in premium ultramobile devices pushing the market forward with the move to Windows 10, and PCs built on Intel’s Skylake architecture.

“We expect that businesses will deploy Windows 10 faster than previous Windows upgrades,” said Atwal, pointing to a survey of 3,000 business buyers in Brazil, China, India, France, the UK and the US, that was conducted late last year.

That survey reported that 80% of businesses expected to have completed the testing and evaluation of Windows 10 within 12 months, and 60% within nine months, so businesses could start to migrate towards the end of 2016.

“By the end of 2017, many business are looking to move as much as 40% of their installed base onto new Windows 10 devices. This will be the catalyst for growth in the PC market in 2017.”