Is PC dead? No, it is probably just changed

Let’s see some numbers about the PC and mobile devices shipment and forecasts.

Taking some recent tables from a press release (Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 6.9 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2013)  from Gartner, that as usual is a very interesting source for market figures, we can understand that the traditional PC market is in decline in 2013 respect to 2012 and I think that this is quite under the eyes af all. If we see the comments made on such tables browsing the net, some sites highlighting this fact as a decline in the market at all, but I want to compare such tables with other numbers, always from Gartner, about the shipments of all mobile devices.

“The proverb says do not compare apples with oranges” someone could say, but I think that from some time the mobile devices could in some way overlap and substitute PCs and even if this is not applicable in all the environments, think about SW development, for other stuff like browsing, word processor writing, e-mailing, consumer user stuff via Apps, this is for sure true. This overlapping is also increasing if you see the newest Samsung Tablet Galaxy PRO with 8.4, 10.1 and 12.2 flavors and the rumors about an upcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro that will make a further step in the replacement of PCs by Tablets.

Just starting from the title of two Garner’s news:

1) Gartner Says Worldwide Traditional PC, Tablet, Ultramobile and Mobile Phone Shipments On Pace to Grow 7.6 Percent in 2014

Vs

2) Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 6.9 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2013

I would say that more than a decline there is a market moving and the devices that could do what up to some years ago were done only by traditional PCs including now also Tablets.

So, starting from PC market in which data includes desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad with data based on the shipments selling into channels

Table 1

we can put it in a visual form as follows:

In which it is clearly visible the loss of about 7% in terms of total shipments and also that among the others Lenovo and Dell are performing better than the Market.

If we see the preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2013, as in the table below, the situation for PC market is even worst.

Table 2

We can see that it is estimated a loss of about 10% in 2013 respect 2012 in PC shipments.

But… if we consider that not media tablets such as the iPad are included in data, and analyzing what the Gartner itself said about the Mobile Market we could make some additional considerations.

Table 3

The table 3, that is in line with the first table, if I aggregate PC and Other Ultramobiles I see  values comparable with the table 2 for 2012 and 2013 (350617 and 316537 thousand of units) for what could be considered in some way traditional PCs put, is useful for other aspects.
As I said above If I could consider Tablets as PC substitutes in some environments and taking in consideration that before iPAD Era the Tablets market wasn’t significative I can obtain the following table

Table 4

From above we can see that even if there is a decrease in the shipment of PC among the years, a decrease of PC+Other Ultramobiles except than in 2014-2015, the shipment of PC+Tables+other Ultramobiles has a positive trend also in 2012-2013 showing a +5.5%.

And if we add also the mobile phones and the total number of devices shipped, the positive trend is confirmed if we see the blu column representing the total number of devices shipped worldwide, and the fact that the market is clearly dominated by mobile smartphones (grey column).

So the conclusion of this rough considerations – and if something is not clear or wrong, please comment, is that even if there is a Market decline for PCs and it probably will continue in the next years, this is just an indication that tasks are now spread among more devices and if the PC Manufacturer want survive they have to consider it, but if we see Dell, Sony, Lenovo, Apple, … this seems on track.

Asian Market feedbacks after day zero at Las Vegas CES

What about the stock exchange the day after the CES keynotes? Of course this is sort of joke but some aspects are anyway interesting.

Starting from the fact that Nikkei 225 showed -0.59% and Kospi Composite index +0.32% this morning we can see:

SAMSUNG Electronics Co., Ltd. (KRX:005935)

Samsung (KRX:005935) shows a decline of 1.22%. In this case I assume that the main reason is not related to CES Keynote and the products presented in Las Vegas but to the fact that the Fourth-quarter sales are less than expected and it looses something compared to Apple in the US and Japan.
Samsung@CES presented a lot of devices, from a 105-inch Ultra HD TV to an interesting Samsung’s Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 that in some way could anticipate what the rumors say about 12.9-inch Ipad Pro and introduces what could be the new paradigm for the upcoming Professional Tablets. Samsung at CES has also confirmed his “Smart” view on Home Appliances.

PANASONIC CORPORATION (TYO:6752)

Despite the fact that Panasonic abandoned the Plasma TVs that were the World best in class TVs of last year it has a rise of about 1.28%. From a financial point of view this could be reasonable due to the fact that the Plasma division in the last years has several losses. Anyway the fact that the Panasonic keynote expecially for the part related to new TV line has been commented not so enthusiastically, see e.g CNET . It shows that sometimes financial consideration could be too myopic and too focused to the near future, but we’ll see in the rest of the year and also we’ll see the technical reviews about the new Panasonic TVs both at 1080 and 4K.

SONY Corporation (TYO:6758)

Quite flat shares shape after Sony keynote that showed the new TV line with a great focus on 4K, the new Bravia HDTVs have also a new design shape. Japanese Company presented also a new “little” flagship, “little” because Z1 Compact, this is the name, has a compact form factor sporting a 4.3-inch display, in contrast with the latest display size approaches, even if with features and performance of the Sony Z1 flagship. Sony presented also a wereable sensor called Core, see e.g. Engadget’s hands-on for details.

LG Electronics Inc (KRX:066570)

For LG the market feedback seems more in line with the CES commentators’ acceptance. LG presented among other, an astonishing flexible 77-inch OLED UHD TV and a quite mature smart TV solution with LG webOS.