Analyst claims tablets are not killing PC sales

For many months now we have been hearing that tablets are killing PC sales. A leading analyst has defunked these statements, writing on BetaNews he said that the increasing sales of tablet computers are not negatively effecting PC sales.

Mike Feibus said “Yes, actually. It’s tempting to witness the appearance of one thing and a change in fortunes of another and assume that the former caused the latter. Our ability to draw a line connecting two points in space is a trait that enables us humans to discover great things. It’s also a quality that can land us in deep trouble if we’re not careful. ”

Feibus claims that that the ominous PC forecasts centered on the wrong inflection point. It was the fourth quarter of 2009 that marked an industry disruption, not the third quarter of 2010.

“In the third quarter of 2009, Microsoft began shipping Windows 7. After enduring 18 months of Windows Vista, the consumer PC market was hungry for computers built around a quality OS. So people flocked to stores to buy. PC shipments climbed an impressive 22.1 percent that quarter, compared to just 0.5 percent in third quarter 2009 (again, according to Gartner). The sales fest continued for another six months.

See, it’s not that third quarter was so bad. It’s that the three prior quarters were so good.

I’ve always been a believer in the Field-of-Dreams approach to the consumer market. Every time we build it, consumers come. If we don’t, well, they don’t. Or they buy something else.

In the third quarter of 2010, Apple built the iPad. And consumers came. The PC ecosystem, meanwhile, blew through its vein of new and shiny over the preceding nine months and had nothing much exciting to offer for the second half of 2010. Ditto for this year’s selling season.”

Kitguru says: We think he may have a point and it will be interesting to watch the channel when Windows 8 is released in the near future.

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