28% Slow in PC Sales Growth Predicted for 2012

By Steve Burke Published December 10, 2011 at 2:29 am

Hardware

Computer hardware market analysis firm IHS iSuppli has informed us that it expects 23 million fewer computers to ship in 2012 than it had originally forecast, currently projected at 376 million shipments down from 399 million shipments. The decay in PC sales growth will drop the industry from a 9.5% global spurt to 6.8%.

Despite one of Western Digital's hard drive factories returning to production and Hitachi's new 4TB drive, the flooding in Thailand is pointed out as the culprit for the industry's damage. The result of this decay, of course, will be a continued price hike of computer hardware that is mass produced in the regions affected by flooding, primarily optical drives and hard disk drives. We suspect a gradual decline in SSD prices as demand rises to counterbalance normal HDD shortages.

In the first quarter of 2012 alone, the hardware industry analysis firm tells us that it expects to see a 3.8 million decrease in PC shipments. IHS iSuppli demonstrates confidence that the industry will return to a surplus, or minimally, will match demand by the end of 2012.

Last modified on December 10, 2011 at 2:29 am

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.

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