iSuppli: Credit Shortage Will Hit PC Sales

Market research firm iSuppli has issued a report that claims worldwide PC shipments will rise by just 4.3 percent in 2009, a two-thirds reduction from its previous forecast of 11.9 percent growth.

The firm also adjusted its expectations for 2010, although that scenario isn’t so bleak. It cut its initial prediction of 9.4 percent growth to 7.1 percent.

“Since iSuppli published its last worldwide PC forecast, the landscape of the global economy has changed dramatically, and in many ways irrevocably,”
said Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at iSuppli, in a statement.

The main problem is the impact on credit lines. The magnitude of the banking collapse has been so great that its impact has affected large corporations, small businesses and individuals alike.

“The result of the financial turmoil is less money to spend, and often that money is itself more expensive,” Wilkins added. “With less money to spend, application markets, like PCs, have been impacted.”

Gartner had a similar
finding last month.

Mobility rises

The trend toward mobility will increase greatly, to the point desktop shipments will actually shrink five percent next year, but will be offset by a 15 percent growth in laptop shipments. That would be great for the laptop vendors except much of that growth is due to low-power, low-priced netbooks, which don’t have as much profit per unit.

Because of this, iSuppli believes demand for netbooks will fall less than it will for more expensive platforms in 2009 thanks to their low prices.

iSuppli had equally bad news last week when it projected that
2008 semiconductor sales will decline by two percent to $266.6 billion, down from about $272 billion in 2007. As late as last month, iSuppli still thought it would be an up year, with a 3.5 percent rise over 2007 sales. The company also predicted the fourth quarter of 2008 would be down 10.9 percent compared with the December 2007 quarter.