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That’s more than a 25 percent drop, and it’s had a serious impact on multiple companies, from HP’s decision to split its consumer and enterprise product divisions, to Dell’s decision to go private several years ago.
After six straight years of declines, Gartner is predicting a small recovery, though 2019’s estimated sales will still be lower than 2016.
This recovery will be principally driven by significant growth in what Gartner calls the premium ultramobile space, as traditional laptop and desktop sales are expected to decline from 220 million units in 2016 to 188 million units in 2019.
The latter decline reflects what we’ve previously predicted: As conventional desktop and laptop systems live for longer periods of time, customers replace them less quickly.
Workstations and gaming PCs have shown some signs of growth over the last few years. But these are high-end, boutique systems by definition, and total growth in that space doesn’t offset the general decline of the desktop and laptop market on the whole.