Gartner: 2009 Will See Worst PC Sales Drop In History

"The PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions as the global economy continues to weaken, users stretch PC lifetimes and PC suppliers grow increasingly cautious," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, in the report.

Gartner projected PC shipments for 2009 of 257 million units, which would represent an 11.9 percent decline from shipments in 2008. Emerging markets previously saw their worst growth (a decline of 11 percent) in 2002, according to Gartner, and mature markets saw theirs (a decline of 7.9 percent) in 2001. Both those markers will be passed this year; Gartner has emerging markets expected to post a 10.4 percent decline and mature markets a 13 percent decline.

Slower GDP will further weaken PC demand and keep inventories at "historic lows," the report suggested. Shiffler said that in mature markets, replacements are expected to account for about 80 percent of shipments.

Desktop PC sales will be especially hammered. By the numbers, Gartner sees worldwide mobile PC shipments of 155.6 million units (a 9 percent increase from 2008) and desktop PC shipments at 101.4 million units (a 31.9 percent decline from 2008). Without accounting for mini-notebook shipments--which Gartner sees as almost doubling, from 11.7 million units to 21 million units in 2009--mobile PCs will grow by only 2.7 percent, the firm said.

Mini-notebooks are gaining traction in the marketplace. Gartner Research Director Angela McIntyre writes in the report that the market is dividing thanks to vendors offering more systems with 9- to 10-inch screens and 7-to 8-inch screens. She said Gartner expects the average price of a common mini-notebook (defined by Gartner as one with an 8.9-inch screen, Microsoft Windows XP and a 160-GB hard drive) to drop to $399 by the end of 2009, and that mini-notebooks will proliferate in emerging markets.

In a note of optimism, Gartner said OEMs and channels would be able to adapt to changing market conditions better than they had the past, thanks to many of the lessons learned following the dot-com bust in 2001.

"Normal seasonality typically means that the third-quarter sell-in is stronger than sell-out, due to inventory build effects, but clearly in the fourth quarter of 2008 vendors saw signals that demand was weakening and sent signals up the supply chain to stop building," said Gartner Managing Vice President Charles Smulders in a statement. "At the same time, the channel cut back inventory due to a combination of economic uncertainty and the credit squeeze. Unlike 2001, vendors were able to react relatively quickly to the signals and push the inventory risk on to the component suppliers. We expect the pattern of stronger sell-out demand than sell-in to continue through the first half of 2009, with the channel choosing to hold inventory at historically low levels."