PC Sales May Post Record Growth This Year
By K.C. Swanson
Staff Reporter
12/11/2003 01:28 PM EST
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So much for the idea that the second half of 2003 would prove to be a bust: PCs have flown off the shelves in the third quarter and are expected to keep up that rapid clip in the fourth quarter -- a trend that's led a leading market research group to predict record unit growth for 2003.
Research group IDC now expects worldwide unit sales of computers to grow 11.4% this year to 152 million, up from its prior forecast of 8.4%. That would mark volume growth of 9% from levels in 2000, until now the record year for PC unit sales.
The upwardly mobile outlook won't come as a big surprise to tech investors who've already witnessed evidence of a sharp upturn, including Dell's (DELL:Nasdaq - commentary - research) guidance for 25% quarter-on-quarter unit growth in hardware sales, and Intel's (INTC:Nasdaq - commentary - research) report of record microprocessor shipments in the third quarter.
The bad news for PC vendors is that fierce industry competition on computer prices should keep revenue flat with last year's levels, at just over $175 billion.
IDC says much of the recent growth has come from consumer purchases of laptop computers, while business purchases have stayed relatively flat. By next year, however, corporate spending should increase somewhat. That should help fuel shipment growth of 11.4% once again in 2004, and lead to revenue growth of 4%.
The outlook for 2003 and 2004 unit growth are both well above last year's scant unit growth of 1.7% and much better than 2001, when the market actually shrank 3.9%. But even the improved outlook can't match the growth seen in the latter half of the 1990s: According to IDC, global PC shipments surged by 19.9% between 1994 and 2000.
