This much is certain that whenever the state of the PC hardware industry is brought up, talk about the Windows operating system is not far behind. This time the focus has shifted to Windows XP instead of the recently released Windows 8.1.
Market research firm IDC recently revealed its statistics for the third quarter of the year.
And the numbers show that the PC industry only fell 16 percent compared to the same period in 2012. Of course, only is used relatively here, because the decline in units came in at 21.4 million PCs.
But while the shipment figures above are not really a cause for joy, they are still a sign that the seemingly continuous collapse of the PC hardware industry has, more or less, slowed down these past few months.
And IDC seems to believe that the imminent retirement of Windows XP is the reason behind this. IDC computing analyst Chrystelle Labesque, in an interview with The Channel, said:
“While it is too early to talk about recovery, the worse seems to have been reached in the second quarter of 2013. However, the ramp up is mainly in the commercial area, with September performance above expectations for most players.
The end of Windows XP support in 2014 is driving IT departments to focus on hardware refresh.”
She does maintain that the launch of Windows 8.1 has not yet factored into this slowdown. But considering that the newest operating system just went live last week, we should find out what kind of a hand it lends to the PC industry in the next few months.
Windows XP is set for official retirement on April 8, 2014, and Redmond has made it no secret that it wants to see most of the XP user base move to either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.
All Comments
This is an attempt to redirect our focus from their prediction being wrong. They know XP was going to retire and they still called it wrong.