The PC industry will celebrate its 35th year anniversary in 2010. From its humble beginning as hobby computer kits in the spring of 1975, the PC industry has come a long way. In 1975 less than 50,000 PCs were sold with a value of about $60M. From this limited start the PC industry has grown to unit sales of over 280M units in 2009. PC retail revenue topped $330B in 2007 and 2008, but is in a declining phase due to continued price declines and a shift to low-cost products such as netbooks. The next table shows the tremendous growth of the PC industry in the last 30+ years. And the growth of the PC industry will continue, but at much lower rates than previously—at least in terms of unit sales.
The sheer size of the PC industry limits its growth rate, but the yearly worldwide sales will grow by over 36% in the next five years—from 281M units in 2009 to nearly 384M in 2014 or a 6.4% compound annual growth rate. Worldwide PCs in-use surpassed 1.3B units in 2009 and will reach nearly1.9B units by year-end 2014. Worldwide cumulative PC sales topped 1B units in 2002 and 2B in 2007 and will surpass 4B in 2013. PCs in-use reached 281M in the U.S. in 2009 and will top 350M in 2014.
PC revenue was growing slower than unit growth due to considerable price declines and is now declining due to lower unit sales growth than price declines. The worldwide PC revenues were $251B in 2000, which increased to over $333B in 2007. Worldwide PC revenue will decline to $300B in 2010 will remain in this range for the next five years.
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