Gartner: PC sales are in permanent decline thanks to tablets

Overall, personal computer sales were in permanent decline in the first quarter, thanks to the continued popularity of tablets, and the trend is expected to intensify going forward.

And there’s nothing an anticipated surge in ultramobiles can do to stop it, according to market research firm Gartner. The firm says that the outcome will be anemic growth rates for Microsoft’s Windows’ market share in 2013 as Google’s Android continue to grow in popularity.

Gartner has estimated that for 2013 we will see about 2.4 billion devices shipped-– that’s PCs, tablets and mobile phones combined, growing 9 percent over last year's comparable numbers.

The firm said that for 2017, we should see about 2.9 billion units moved but what people will be buying between now and then will change substantially.

However, beginning with the 2nd quarter, the news will be bad for desktop PCs and notebook OEMs, but good for tablet and smartphone makers-- at least according to Gartner.

The overall number of PCs sold this year will fall 7.6 percent compared to last year to 315 million units, with the only bright spot being ultramobiles, which will most likely increase 140 percent to about 23.2 million units.

Overall shipments will surge 69 percent to 197 million units, Gartner suggests, while smartphones will make up an ever-increasing slice of the the mobile phone segment.

Of the 1.875 billion mobile phones Gartner predicts will be sold this year, a whopping 1 billion units are predicted to be smartphones, compared with 675 million units in 2012, out of 1.746 billion.

Gartner also accredited this new trend to a proliferation of lower-priced tablets and smartphones, and their overall growing capability, which means that consumers spend more time fondling screens than punching keys and moving mice.

The analyst firm added that tablets are also becoming the consumer's main computing device, and that Apple's iPad gets the lion's share of tablets sold in 2012.

Gartner called this a permanent shift rather than a temporary trend induced by a "more austere economic environment".

Research vice president Carolina Milanesi said in a statement-- "As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis."

The shift also means that Windows will struggle to grow. Gartner expects just a mere 2.1 percent growth in market share to 354 million units in 2013, compared to a 73 percent increase for Android, to 861 million units, and to 37 percent for Mac and iOS to 293 million.

Going forward, there is a bit of hope for the world’s largest software maker. By 2017, Gartner estimates a second-place fight between Windows and Apple’s iOS-Mac, with 570 million and 504 million units to be sold by the Redmond and Cupertino camps respectively.

Android will continue to dominate the number-one spot, with 1.46 billion units sold. Gartner doesn’t break out by device type. Instead, it simply combines iOS and Mac from Apple and throws in Windows for Intel and ARM tablets and Windows Phone into the same report, even though the platforms are all different.

The suggestion from Gartner is that Microsoft’s phone 8 or tablet 8 strategies will have gained some traction and that its devices will be selling in larger numbers four years from now, but not before.