IDC is about to release new estimates for Q4 2008, predicting that PC shipments will fall by 1%--it had previously expected shipments to rise by 6% during the usually robust holiday period, reports the Wall Street Journal.
If those projections prove accurate, computer-makers like Dell, HP, and Lenovo are going to have to slash prices on PCs and other hardware.
Computer-makers themselves expect a lot of orders to get pushed back, and in many cases, those will turn into cancellations pure-and-simple. Because this isn't going away anytime soon.
Economist Nouriel Roubini is already talking about a recession "longer and deeper" than any we've experienced since WWII.
Even if the economy were to exit a recession by the end of 2009 the recovery could be so weak because of the impairment of the financial system and of the credit mechanism (i.e. a growth rate of 1-1.5% for a while well below the potential of 2.5-2.75%) that it may feel like a recession even if the economy is technically out of the recession.One hedge fund manager I spoke with thinks it will go on even longer than that. "The Great Depression went on for more than 10 years, and what's going on now in the financial system is pretty similar," he told me.
But it's not all bad news for customers--anyone left standing in early 2009 should be able to command some pretty good deals on hardware.
No comments:
Post a Comment