PCs should be sold as-a-service: Gartner

Analyst firm Gartner has predicted that 5G will rescue global smartphone sales.

2019 will see a sales dip, the firm says, with 2018’s 1.813 billion units to shrink to 1.743 billion in 2019.

Come 2020, that number will rebound to 1.768 billion.

Ranjit Atwal, a senior research director at Gartner, said the 2019 dip “is due to consumers holding onto their phones longer, given the limited attraction of new technology.”

Atwal said phone-makers will try to spark sales by adding 5G “to boost replacements of existing 4G phones.” But he noted that “less than half of communications service providers globally will have launched a commercial 5G network in the next five years,” making the imperative to upgrade to a new handset weak.

Punters are also hanging onto their PCs for ages, as shown in the table below in which Gartner describe the market for all end-user computing devices.

Worldwide Device Shipments by Device Type, 2018-2021 (Millions of Units).
Source: Gartner (September 2019)

Gartner reckons the surge in business PC buying spurred by Windows 7-to-10 migrations will have passed next year, sending sales down 3.9 percent among business buyers.

Things are already worse in consumer PCs, with that segment of the market down 9.8 percent for 2019 and falling below 40 percent of the total market.

“There is no doubt the PC landscape is changing,” Atwal said. “The consumer PC market requires high-value products that can meet specific consumer tasks, such as gaming. Likewise, PC vendors are having to cope with uncertainty from potential tariffs and Brexit disruptions. Ultimately, they need to change their business models to one based on annual service income, rather than the peaks and troughs of capital spending.”