The abacus-shufflers of analyst firm IDC have revised their 2016 PC sales forecasts downwards.

The firm now says PC shipments “... are forecast to decline by 7.3% year over year”. That's “roughly two per cent below earlier projections as conditions have been weaker than expected.” The firm names “weak currencies, depressed commodity prices, political uncertainty, and delayed projects” as the weaker conditions impacting sales.

Windows 10 isn't helping matters either, because lots of people are availing themselves of free Windows 10 upgrades rather than buying a new PC. The firm also says that “while a large share of enterprises are evaluating Windows 10, the pace of new PC purchases has not yet stabilized commercial PC shipments.” Which sounds like plenty of organisations just aren't pulling the upgrade trigger fast enough to give the PC market a kick.

IDC also blames Windows 10 for slowing workstation sales. Earlier this week the firm reported EMEA workstation shipment numbers, reporting sales of 1,170,000 in the region during 2015, down from 2014's 1,194,000 shipments. "It looks like Windows 10 migration has been the priority in enterprise infrastructure budgets this year," said Mohamed Hefny, program manager in the Virtualization, Systems, and Infrastructure Solutions department of IDC CEMA.

Workstations sales are expected to climb 0.9 per cent in 2016, which is welcome news for the channel because workstation buyers tend to be big IT shops with lots of other requirements. Jamming a door open with workstation sales is a grand way to get other stuff done.

Back to the global PC market, IDC now predicts just 255.6m machines will ship in 2016, of which 103.3m will be desktops. The firm reckons we'll see “... progressively smaller declines through 2017 followed by stable volume in 2018.” ®