Maybe.
Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes this morning trimmed his 2011 PC unit forecast to 2.2%, from 3.4%, to reflect hard-disk drive shortages, lower notebook and desktop demand due to continued economic weakness, and a higher cannibalization rate from tablets."
For Q4, he now sees a 0.3% unit decline in shipments from a year ago, down from a previous forecast of a 4.3% increase. "We believe HDD shortages, combined with lower overall demand, has had a more pronounced impact near term than previously anticipated," he writes. Reitzes think Q4 units will be down 2% sequentially, much worse than the five-year average sequential increase of 7%.
For 2012, he now sees unit growth of just 0.8%, down from 5.1%, "as HDD shortages could impact some supply in [the 2012 first half] and the tablet and smartphone markets could continue to cannibalize the PC market – especially as docking options become more robust."
Reitzes notes that there are moves afoot to make tablets more PC-like in their functionality. For instance, he thinks Microsoft could be looking at creating a version of Office for Apple iOS devices.
While the analyst says the market should get support from the arrival of Windows 8 later in 2012 and the spread of super-thin Ultrabooks, he cautions that "the corporate refresh cycle is losing some steam as unemployment remains high."
