El Segundo, Calif. — Worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter of 2009 fell by 14.4 percent, totaling 66.5 million units, compared to the fourth quarter of 2008, due to weaker than expected desktop sales, reports iSuppli. Shipments dropped by 8.1 percent compared to the same period in 2008.
iSuppli says this is the largest historic rate decline in the seven years the market researcher has been tracking the PC market.
“The worldwide recession sparked by the credit crisis slammed PC shipments for the second quarter in succession during the first three months of 2009,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research at iSuppli, in a statement. “The first-quarter performance of the worldwide PC market was worse than iSuppli had expected in its prior forecast, which called for a 4 percent decline in shipments compared to the same period in 2008. After a long period of immunity to the global downturn, the economic crisis finally has begun to impact the PC market,” he added.
Unit shipments of desktops in the first quarter plummeted by 23 percent compared to the same period in 2008, reports iSuppli. The bright spot: notebook shipments grew 10 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008, thanks to strong netbook sales through network operator retail stores.
iSuppli expects netbooks will account for 14 percent of worldwide notebook PC shipments in 2009, up from 9 percent last year.
The global PC shipment report shows that there were no changes in the rankings of the top 5 PC OEMs in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008.