PC sales to bottom out, says analyst

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

The worst may be over for the PC market, at least according to a Gartner analyst.

Chatting with the Wall Street Journal, Gartner analyst Tracy Tsai said she believes the freefall in PC sales will slow this quarter, resulting in just a 3 percent drop over last year's fourth quarter. This year's third-quarter PC sales showed an 8.6 percent decline from the same period in 2012.

The analyst expects PC shipments in 2014 to be about flat compared with this year's results.

PC sales have hurt by the heavy competition from smartphones and tablets. But the demand for tablets and tablet-like devices may actually factor into the projections for PC sales. Gartner's forecast includes hybrid devices that could be classified as tablets, the Journal noted.

"The decline is at a much slower rate," Tsai told the Journal. "The global economy is stabilizing. Also, there will be more lower-cost, aggressively priced two-in-one (tablet with a keyboard) devices that are being launched in the second half of this year, which should help demand."