Gartner this week lowered its 2015 forecast for global device shipments due to the ongoing decline in PC volumes.
The research firm expects combined shipments of mobile phones, tablets and PCs to grow by 1.5% to 2.5 billion units this year. In its previous forecast, issued in March, Gartner predicted growth of 2.8%.
Gartner also predicted that global spending on devices will fall for the first time this year since 2010 to $605.6 billion from $641.9 billion in 2014.
"Our forecast for unit shipment growth for all devices in 2015 has dropped by 1.3 percentage points from last quarter’s estimate," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, in a statement on Monday.
"This was partly due to a continued slowdown in PC purchases in Western Europe, Russia and Japan in particular, largely due to price increases resulting from local currency devaluation against the dollar," he said.
Gartner predicts shipments of desktop, notebook and ultramobile PCs will fall to 300 million units this year from 314 million in 2014. Tablet volumes are also forecast to fall, to 514 million this year from 540 million a year ago.
"The tablet has become a ‘nice to have’ device, and there is no real need for an upgrade as regularly as for the phone," said Gartner research director Roberta Cozza.
Meanwhile, mobile phone shipments are expected to grow to 1.94 billion from 1.88 billion in 2014.
