According to the research company Gartner, the PC sales will suffer a sharpest decline during the current year.The document released this Monday shows that during 2009 the PC sales will decline with 12 percent to 257 million units.

The desktop units will be the most affected and Gartner predicted a 32 percent fall for this segment of the market. The laptop sales will rise with only 9 percent during 2009. The company expects that 155.6 million laptops would be shipped during this year. The research company noted that the slowdown would affect both mature and emerging markets.
 

If the forecast will prove to be correct this will mean the sharpest decline since 2001, when the sales of PCs have dropped with 3,2 percent.
 

"Slower GDP growth will generally weaken demand and slow new penetration, lengthening PC lifetimes will reduce replacements, and supplier caution will keep inventories at historic lows until confidence in a recovery eventually firms," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner.
 

In June last year, the number of personal computers in use worldwide hit one billion and the analysts have estimated that the second billion would be reached in 2014. However, it remains to be seen if this prediction will be correct in the light of the latest economic developments.