Predicting the future is not as easy as looking into a crystal ball and magically seeing the information that you want presented in front of you. Gartner (News - Alert) and International Data Corporation (IDC) are the two major PC market analyst groups that most people rely on to understand and predict what is happening in the market. The problem is that lately their forecasts have not exactly been on the mark.

Just a couple of months ago, the expectation was looking kind of bleak, but even then, not as bleak as previously expected. In June IDC (News - Alert) predicted that worldwide PC shipments would decline by over six percent. This figure was revised two months later when IDC changed their prediction to 3.7 percent for 2014.

The problem with arriving at a figure that everyone can agree on is the fact that every analyst group has a different determination as to what is and is not a PC. For instance, IDC includes Chromebooks, however hybrid tablet notebooks are not considered in the PC category. On the other hand, Gartner includes hybrids but not Chromebooks. You can see where this can lead to a lot of confusion.

There is another thing that I have noticed from the groups’ chart, shown below, of the top five vendors when it comes to worldwide shipments. If you look at all of the numbers for the top five vendors you will notice that each one represents a growth in the year-over-year third quarter figures. What brings the overall total down is the other category which includes all the small manufacturers of PCs.

Above is IDC’s chart, below is Gartner’s chart and you can see the difference. While both agree on the top four, their choice for fifth place is different, as are some of the other numbers. According to IDC worldwide PC shipments are down about 1.7 percent while Gartner only sees the drop as being about 0.5 percent. However the total number of unit shipments is fairly close with IDC saying 78.5 million and Gartner claiming 79.4 million units.

At the end of August, Jay Chou, IDC senior research analyst, said "Programs to reduce PC prices, such as Windows 8.1 with Bing, have helped to improve PC shipments in some segments. Coupled with a shift toward more mobile PCs, the market has seen a quickened pace of innovation and a focus on price points. Nevertheless, the prospects for significant PC growth in the long term remain tenuous, as users increasingly see PCs as only one of several computing devices."

With respect to third quarter results, Chou commented, "Although shipments did not decline as much as feared, these preliminary results still indicate 2014Q3 registered one of the weaker sequential growth quarters on record for a calendar 3rd quarter, when the market historically was driven by Back-to-School sales and business purchasing. The current growth of lower-priced systems, while encouraging in the short run, brings concern for the long-term viability of vendors to adequately remain in the PC space."

Concerning the European, Middle East and Asia markets (EMEA), Gartner noted that while HP remained the top vendor, its competitors were quickly growing. Lenovo (News - Alert) improved its shipments by 45 percent year-over-year, with overall, growth in the EMEA regions roughly doubling the average for worldwide top-five vendor growth at 9.6 percent.

Mikako Kitagawa, who is the principal analyst at Gartner, said "Growth in the mature markets was offset by a decline in shipments in emerging markets similar to what was seen in the second quarter of 2014. Positive results in Western Europe and North America can be a sign of gradual recovery for the PC industry. Consumers' attention is slowly going back to PC purchases as tablet adoption peaked with mainstream consumers. The transition from PCs to tablets has faded as tablet penetration has reached the 40-50 percent range."

As we can see from the charts from both analysts, the overall figures are down on a year-over-year basis, but the good news for PC manufacturers is that the decline is significantly beginning to decline.