IDC this week said that while the PC industry would end the year better off than it had expected, the foreseeable future holds no hope for a return of growth.

Instead, the business will be a zero-sum game of replacement PCs, where gains by one computer manufacturer or operating system developer will come at the cost of declines for rivals.

According to IDC’s latest forecast, PC shipments will be down about 3% in 2014, a slightly smaller drop than the previous estimate and just half the decrease the researcher tapped earlier in the year. Ironically, the year’s latest estimate was close to the 4% drop the researcher predicted near the end of 2013, before it revised its prognostications downward. Like most analysts, IDC’s were caught off guard by an uptick in shipments as corporations that failed to make an April deadline set by Microsoft continued to replace Windows XP PCs months after the OS’s retirement.

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