Windows 8 fails to reignite PC market, 4Q sales down by 4.3%: Gartner

LONDON (REUTERS) - Holiday season shoppers shunned Windows 8 desktops and notebooks in favour of tablets and smartphones, resulting in a 4.3 per cent fall in PC sales in the fourth quarter, research firm Gartner said on Monday.

Worldwide PC shipments declined to 90.3 million units in the last three months of 2012, Gartner said, indicating that the sector was suffering from a shift in consumer habits as much as a weak global economy.

"Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by 'cannibalising' PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs," said Ms Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

"Whereas as once we imagined a world in which individual users would have both a PC and a tablet as personal devices, we increasingly suspect that most individuals will shift consumption activity to a personal tablet, and perform creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC."