gartner

Ultrabook and MacBook Air shipments numbers will grow by about 7 million units in 2013, according to market researcher Gartner.

"We are looking at about 5 percent of total mobile notebook shipments in 2012. That includes Apple's MacBook Air, which is a big portion of that five percent," Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner, told CNET.

Kitagawa went on to say that "big" does not necessarily mean more than 50 percent but would not get more specific.

Gartner describes the combination of ultrabooks and the MacBook Air as "ultramobile notebooks." Typically, ultramobile laptops … Read more

Ultrabook numbers will fall far short of Intel's aggressive market share targets, an IDC analyst told CNET. The MacBook Air, meanwhile, continues to coast amid continued popularity.

An IDC report today showed a weak PC market caught in its seventh consecutive quarter of little to no growth.

"The volume isn't there and it's going to be way below what Intel had hoped for," IDC analyst Jay Chou told CNET, referring to ultrabooks.

"The first half [of 2012] is about 500,000 ultrabooks shipped worldwide. It's nowhere near Intel's initial hope," Chou … Read more

Worldwide PC shipments are down 0.1 percent from last year, signaling the PC market's seventh consecutive quarter of little to no growth, according to analyst reports.

Though HP continued to be at the top of the heap, its global shipments declined by about 12 percent, according to reports from research firms Gartner and IDC. Worldwide shipments totaled 87.5 million units in the second quarter of 2012.

Among vendors, Apple was the only one to see a growth in shipments. Its 12 percent share of the market this year meant the company's shipments grew 4.3 percent, … Read more

Early discussion of cloud computing focused on the public option. In fact, the economic concept of computing delivered as a sort of utility by mega service providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft was at the core of the original cloud-computing concept.

As it turns out though, these public clouds are hardly the only form that cloud computing has taken. Computing is more complicated than a true utility like electricity. For this and other reasons, private and hybrid clouds -- which use computers and other IT resources controlled by a single organization -- have evolved to become an important part … Read more

PC shipments in the first quarter didn't scorch any growth charts, but they did avoid a predicted decline.

According to Gartner data, PC shipments in the first quarter checked in at 89 million units, up 1.9 percent from a year ago. Gartner has projected a 1.2 percent decline. IDC data shows PC unit growth of 2.3 percent in the first quarter.

In other words, the PC patient has a pulse despite a tablet onslaught.

However, there are plenty of things to worry the PC industry. For starters, India and China growth wasn't that great. Europe … Read more

Worldwide tablet sales are expected to reach 118.9 million units this year, led by Apple's iOS, according to a Gartner report, which adds that this number is a 98 percent increase from 2011's sales of 60 million units.

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, noted in the report today that Apple continues to be the dominant media tablet operating system, and is expected to account for 61.4 percent of worldwide media tablet sales to end users in 2012. This will be down from 66.6 percent in 2011.

Despite the arrival of Windows-based devices to … Read more

Gartner Group is predicting Microsoft will control only 4 percent of the worldwide tablet market in 2012, trailing Apple and Google as a distant third player in the space.

Gartner estimates that Apple will sell 73 million tablets worldwide in 2012, and Android OEMs another 38 million. Tablet makers running Windows will sell 4.8 million devices, Gartner estimated in new data released this week. Gartner is expecting 119 million tablets to be sold worldwide in total this year.

It's not just because Windows 8, Microsoft's first truly touch-centric, tablet-optimized operating system, isn't expected to launch until … Read more

The PC market is likely to see another sluggish year but is poised for a rebound in 2013.

Global PC shipments will hit 368 million in 2012, Gartner forecast today, just a 4.4 percent gain from last year. Though not a huge bump, this year will at least show an improvement over 2011 when shipments totaled 352.8 million units, just a half a percentage point gain over 2010.

PC vendors have faced a difficult climate with a lethargic economy, supply constraints, and especially competition from smartphones and tablets.

"The use of applications such as e-mail, social networking, … Read more

Traditional PCs are in crisis over in the U.K. and France--and Apple and tablets are picking up the slack.

In the fourth quarter of 2011, shipments in the U.K. PC market fell to 2.9 million units, a decline of 19.6 percent compared with the same period in 2010 (see table below). PCs run the Microsoft Windows operating system.

That marked the fifth consecutive quarterly shipment decline, and also the worst decline in five quarters, Gartner said. For the whole year, the U.K. market declined 15.9 percent, shrinking by nearly 2 million units from 2010. … Read more