PC Sales Up by 52% Next Five Years, Forrester Says

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has compared the PC to a farm truck, saying that when America was an agrarian economy, “all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farm."

The analogy is that PCs will be displaced by new devices such as the iPad.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, obviously does not agree. “I think people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come," he said. "The PC as we know it will continue to morph form factor."

Semantics aside, there still is a question: is the iPad something new, a new market, or simply a new PC form factor? Steve Jobs may not view the iPad as a PC, but we do, says Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester Research analyst.

"Our view is that the consumer PC market in the United States is indeed getting bigger," she says. "Over the next five years, PC unit sales across all form factors will increase by 52 percent."

Desktops are the only type of PC whose numbers will be fewer in 2015 than they are today, she argues.

Growth will come from new form factors like tablets, but laptop sales will increase steadily also.

Tablets will, however, cannibalize netbooks, outselling netbooks starting in 2012.

In 2015, 23 percent of all PCs sold to consumers in the US will be tablets.

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