PC Budgets Shift To Tablets And Smartphones

PCs sales are down, probably because consumers are spending their money on tablets and smartphones instead. According to a Gartner preliminary report, only 87.5 million PCs were sold in the third quarter of 2012, which is 8% down from the third quarter in 2011.

Sales this time of year normally are driven by back-to-school shoppers, noted Gartner, but that wasn't the case this quarter. Acer and Toshiba especially suffered due to the poor consumer market. Even Apple saw a 6% decline. Lenovo was the only vendor to see an increase.

Here's what the U.S. PC shipment estimates look like:

"The lack of appeal and innovation in PCs, combined with a challenging economic environment, led the consumer spend to move to other devices," Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, said in a statment.