Across Europe, IT companies are seeing an average 20 percent drop in spending on computers year-on-year. We are talking about the busiest period in the IT year, the fourth quarter, and you can still see a massive drop compared to the previous year. Several of our sources positioned in big IT companies have confirmed this trend.
Many people are concerned about their future and the outcome of 2009 and most of them actually don’t need a new PC to begin with. The big problem is that the mainstream market is starting to realize that you don’t need to upgrade that fast, and therefore people are delaying their planned upgrade shopping for better times.
This won’t result in slow down of the product innovation and introduction rate in 2009, at least not dramatically, as the companies will have to become even more innovative and competitive to lure people to buy new stuff.