Few companies can disrupt an entire industry with a single product launch. But Apple Inc., whose history is filled with such game-changing moments, has done it again with its iPad tablet.
Apple’s iPad has rattled the technology world by causing many consumers to think twice about buying new personal computers, two market-research firms reported Wednesday.
That hesitation was one reason worldwide shipments of new PCs stumbled in the third quarter, growing more slowly than research firms IDC and Gartner Inc. had anticipated.
The other big factor was consumers’ dreary outlook on the economy, especially in the U.S. and Europe, which has led them to pinch pennies more, pay off debts and spend less on PCs and some other kinds of electronics.
The hype about tablets has computer makers and their suppliers worried about how much ground traditional PCs might lose in coming months and years. Apple sold 3.3 million iPads in the device’s first three months on the market, and some analysts estimate Apple sold more than 5 million during the following quarter, which ended in September.
Until now, it wasn’t clear whether Apple was poaching would-be PC buyers with the iPad, or merely giving Apple fans another expensive gadget to add to their computer collections.
Far fewer tablets are sold than PCs, of course, and Intel Corp., the biggest maker of PC microprocessors and a new entrant in the tablet market, said Tuesday in reporting its quarterly numbers that it’s too early to tell how much of the PC business is being cannibalized by tablets. But IDC and Gartner said the smaller, keyboardless devices are at the very least pushing many consumers to pause their decisions on buying new computers.
Gartner said PC makers shipped more than 88.3 million machines in the third quarter, an increase of 7.6 percent over last year. Gartner was expecting a…