Research firm Gartner has offered a hopeful forecast for PC sales this year that suggests the tech sector is poised for a rebound. The group is projecting global units shipped to jump 20 percent this year, with dollar sales forecasted to increase by 12 percent.
Significantly, Gartner’s forecast for brisk IT spending substantially raises the estimates the firm offered in December. Hardware Central takes a look.
The outlook for the PC industry is improving considerably, market research firm Gartner said in a new report that projects a much higher rate of growth for PC sales worldwide in 2010.
The company expects the total number of shipments worldwide to top 366 million units, which would be 20 percent growth over the 305.8 million sold in 2009. Thanks to continued pricing pressure and emphasis on cheaper products, PC dollar spending would rise 12.2 percent.
While a nice rise, this would be coming off a pretty poor 2009, where PC sales were off for three quarters before rocketing up in the fourth quarter. That helped end the year on a positive note, with 2009 up 5.2 percent over 2008.
More important, this projection is a big increase over what the firm was expecting in December. Just four months ago, Gartner expected 2010 unit sales to rise 13.3 percent and dollar sales to rise 2.2 percent. In November 2009, that projected growth rate was 12.6 percent.
