“Overall, holiday PC sales were weak in many key regions due to the intensifying competition in consumer spending.” IDC also described consumer PC spending as soft, warning it’s likely a trend: The “situation is likely to persist in 2011, if not get worse as a wave of media tablets could put a dent on the traditional PC market,” IDC research diector David Daoud said in a statement. “Media tablets, such as the iPad, as well as other consumer electronic (CE) devices, such as game consoles, all competed against PCs,” Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst, said in a statement. Well, hell, no wonder every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane with a manufacturing plant, or the funds to outsource one, showed off a tablet during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show. While they didn’t agree on the actual numbers or year-over-year growth, both analyst firms cited iPad and other media tablets (What? There are others?) as displacing PC sales.
Gartner and IDC both released fourth-quarter PC shipments this afternoon (PC here refers to Windows computers and Macs).
