Eurozone woes to hurt PC sales: Gartner

“There are a lot of solutions to the European debt crisis, but there is no immediate idea whether these solutions will succeed or consumer confidence will be restored,” said Tracy Tsai, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“It will call for certain actions, such as tighter government budgets, to make these solutions work,” she said.

“Even so, I do not believe consumer confidence will recover immediately.”

Tsai noted that Europe currently has a lower share of the global PC market, accounting for 30 percent in the second half of 2011 compared with 33 percent to 34 percent in the past.

Taiwanese manufacturers Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc. generated 50 percent of their revenue from the European market in the fourth quarter of 2010, but the figure dropped to about 40 percent in the third quarter of last year after the sovereign debt problems hit, Tsai said.

PC shipments in Europe, including desktop and notebook computers, are projected to grow 2.4 percent year-on-year in 2012, much lower than the 9 percent forecast for Latin America, 10 percent for Asia and 15-20 percent for China.

“We remain conservative about the worldwide PC market in the first half of 2012, but we think the situation will improve in the second half of the year with the launch of the new CPU for Ultrabook laptops and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 8 software,” Tsai said.

According to the International Data Corp. (IDC), the PC market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) continued to contract for the fourth consecutive quarter in the October-December period of 2011, although the decline was not as steep as expected.

The market continued to be adversely affected by the debt crisis in the eurozone, which led to more cautious business investments, while consumers' budgets continued to be captured by media tablets and smartphones, particularly in Western Europe, the IDC said.

PC shipments in the EMEA region totaled 29.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, a year-on-year decrease of 6.5 percent from 31.9 million units, while those for the whole of 2011 showed an annual decline of 7 percent to 103 million units, according to the IDC.

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