The Gartner research group reported that worldwide sales of PCs have increased this year. Most analysts had been projecting PC sales to trend downward due to the recession, but buoyed by strong sales in the 3rd quarter, the PC market will show a 2.8% increase over 2008. This trend is expected to continue into 2010 shich should show a 12.6% increase.
However, even with the stronger than expected showing in unit sales, overall market value fell based on unprecedented decline in average PC selling price. Even though the report doesn’t quite say it, this decline in market value is due to the strong showing of the new netbooks or “mini-notebooks”. Since the sales of desktop PCs fell 9% from last year, the laptop segment, augmented by the popularity of the netbooks, has driven the sales increases.
