iSuppli Slashes 2009 PC Growth To 4.9 Percent

Worldwide PC sales will see only a single-digit increase in 2009 with growth next year reaching only 4.3 percent – a nearly 75 percent reduction over prior expectations of a 11.9 percent increase, a research firm announced Thursday.

The picture for Apple sales appears brighter than the glum outlook for overall PC demand. Earlier this week, Piper Jaffray’s Apple watcher Gene Munster said he expects Mac sales to grow 8 percent to 16 percent when Apple reports in December.

Researchers at iSuppli said the drastically lower expectations were due to the embattled economy.

“The result of the financial turmoil is less money to spend,” iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins said. “With less money to spend, application markets, like PCs, have been impacted.” Wilkins said in a statement.

Notebook computer sales will tripled as demand for desktops decline.

Sales of desktop PCs in 2009 are expected to fall five percent with notebooks growing 15 percent as demand for low-cost “netbooks,” according to iSuppli.

Those netbooks could be one of the few high points in sluggish computer sales. On Wednesday, IDC announced chips such as Intel’s Atom processor aimed at the netbook market would grow by 8.3 percent amid gloomy projections for the overall chip sector.

A day before cutting its prediction for PC sales, iSuppli announced it expects chip demand to fall 2 percent instead of grow by 3.5 percent as it had announced just last month.

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