The great 2013 PC sales crash could be even worse than expected

Although there’s some new hope for sales growth in the second half of the year, 2013 has turned out to be an ugly, ugly year for traditional PCs so far. New research from IHS iSuppli suggests that the PC market might be in even worse shape than previously expected, as “contract manufacturers of notebook computers suffered a worse-than-expected first quarter after shipments to clients like Apple and Hewlett-Packard tumbled to the lowest level in three years.” Overall iSuppli projects that notebook shipments were down by 17% quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2013, or 4 to 5 percentage points worse than the firm had initially forecast. It isn’t entirely gloomy, however, because iSuppli thinks PC shipments will pick up in the second half when “lower-priced ultrathin PCs with new touch-enabled features become available on the market, along with the release of a more powerful microprocessor from chipmaker Intel.”