The heat wave that scorched the country this summer has left behind a very unlikely victim: personal computer (PC) sales. The PC market in the last three months — April, May and June — dropped by almost 8.1 per cent, primarily because the extreme summer heat during the second half of the quarter lead to families preferring to invest in consumer durables rather than desktops, says International Data Corporation (IDC). The consumer desktop market performed lower than expected as consumer durables were key to home spending in the last quarter. Despite the slowdown, the total PC market in the second quarter of 2003 grew by 11.8 per cent on a year-on-year basis. However, the commercial PC shipments registered stronger than expected growth in the three months only because of spill-over billing from the previous three months of the year.
