IDC reports that worldwide PC shipments were at 76.3 million units in Q1 of this year. That’s a drop of 13.9 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012. It’s even worse when you consider that IDC was only predicting a 7.7 percent drop in shipments last quarter. Oh, and to just rub salt in the wound, IDC notes that this is the single worst quarter for PC shipments since it started tracking the market in 1994.

What could possibly be causing this huge decline in PC sales? IDC says there’s a lot at play here including a decrease in shipments of low-cost Mini Notebooks, and an increase in consumer spending on tablets and smartphones. The high cost of PCs and Ultrabooks are also presenting obstacles as consumers don’t want to spend more than $1,000 on a PC.

All of the above reasons have contributed to the decline of PC shipments, but IDC points to Windows 8 as one of the leading causes of the current slump the PC industry is facing:

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” said Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays. “While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices. Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market.”

IDC’s findings jibe with that of UK PC Merchants who in February reported that consumers were still buying Windows 7 PCs over those that came with Windows 8. In fact, one merchant said that he had to start offering Windows 7 as the default OS again lest he lose business.

While this certainly looks bad, IDC reminds us that there’s at least one silver lining in all of this. Going against all expectations, Lenovo posted double year-on-year growth in the U.S. while everybody else, including Dell and HP, have posted double digit losses.

So, what can Microsoft do to turn its, and the entire PC industry’s, fortunes around? That’s hard to say, but the company is obviously up to something with Windows Blue. Whether the improvements being made to Windows 8 can actually turn everything around remains to be seen though.

IDC released a revised tablet market forecast for the year today with the major takeaway being that Android tablets may finally become the dominant player in the market. The availability of cheap tablets, most noticeably Android tablets, will lead to tablet shipments to see a sizable increase this year.

The firm predicts that the worldwide tablet market will ship 190.9 million devices over the course of this year with Android making up 48.8 percent of the shipments. Apple isn’t too far behind, however, with 46 percent of total shipments. Android may become the dominant player this year thanks to the wide breadth of options available, but it’s incredibly impressive to see Apple stand toe-to-toe in shipments with only three models.

Both iOS and Android will see some losses in their marketshare over the next five years as Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets start to take hold. IDC predicts, however, that these Windows tablets will be much like their Windows Phone 8 counterparts – a distant third place with Windows 8 tablets expected to only command 7.4 percent of the market by 2017.

“Microsoft’s decision to push two different tablet operating systems, Windows 8 and Windows RT, has yielded poor results in the market so far,” said Tom Mainelli, Research Director, Tablets. “Consumers aren’t buying Windows RT’s value proposition, and long term we think Microsoft and its partners would be better served by focusing their attention on improving Windows 8. Such a focus could drive better share growth in the tablet category down the road.”

Those who prefer eReaders over tablets may not like what’s coming next as IDC’s final prediction for the next five years sees the tablet precursors only having a few more years of growth ahead of it before the market starts an irreversible downward trend in 2015. By then, however, most consumers will have probably switched to multimedia tablets as the market will drive down prices to super affordable levels by then.

“Although the third quarter was focused on the clearing of Windows 7 inventory, preliminary research indicates the clearance did not significantly boost the uptake of Windows 8 systems in Q4,” said Jay Chou, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. “Lost in the shuffle to promote a touch-centric PC, vendors have not forcefully stressed other features that promote a more secure, reliable and efficient user experience. As Windows 8 matures, and other corresponding variables such as Ultrabook pricing continue to drop, hopefully the PC market can see a reset in both messaging and demand in 2013.”

The U.S. market in particular took a big hit, dropping 7% compared to holiday 2011. IDC blames the drop on the failure of imagination manufacturers had towards what a good Windows 8 experience would be. However, this could simply be the beginning of the post-PC world that Apple and Microsoft are predicting.

“Consumers expected all sorts of cool PCs with tablet and touch capabilities,” said David Daoud, research director at IDC U.S. Quarterly PC Tracker. “Instead, they mostly saw traditional PCs that feature a new OS (Windows 8 ) optimized for touch and tablet with applications and hardware that are not yet able to fully utilize these capabilities. Despite a generally weak performance, some leading brands managed do to well relative to the market. HP, Lenovo, Asus, and Samsung were among the top performers, taking advantage of some consumer interest in Windows 8, and a push to build up their presence ahead of 2013.”

Despite its recent write-downs and accusations of accounting fraud at Autonomy before its acquisition, HP continues to rank highest on IDC worldwide PC shipment rankings. HP seized on this bit of good news, highlighting the fact that the IDC rankings include the workstation segment rather than just the consumer market. From HP:

IDC announced today that HP maintained the No. 1 position in PC shipments worldwide and in the United States. The IDC analysis also includes the very important workstation segment and therefore represents the most comprehensive analysis of the entire PC market.

We believe HP’s position as the market share leader demonstrates our ongoing commitment to deliver superior PC products and experiences across customer segments.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg is reporting that even HP CEO Meg Whitman knows it will take half a decade to pull the company up from its current downward trajectory.

The latest report from IDC has found that Android was on three out of every four smartphone shipped during the third quarter. In actual numbers, that comes out to 136 million Android phones shipped over last few months. There were only 181.1 million smartphones shipped in the third quarter which puts Android on 75 percent of all smartphone shipments.

“Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008,” said Ramon Llamas, research manager, Mobile Phones at IDC. “In every year since then, Android has effectively outpaced the market and taken market share from the competition. In addition, the combination of smartphone vendors, mobile operators, and end-users who have embraced Android has driven shipment volumes higher. Even today, more vendors are introducing their first Android-powered smartphones to market.”

So we know that Android is doing incredibly well, but what about the rest? IDC found that Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones during the quarter which accounted for 14.9 percent of the entire smartphone market. IDC says that the iPhone 5 and lower prices on older models helped Apple reach 57.3 percent growth over third quarter iOS shipments last year.

BlackBerry and Symbian both saw losses across the board with both operating systems only accounting for 7.7 million and 4.1 million smartphone shipments respectively. IDC notes that Symbian in particular may no longer be in the running in 2013 as Symbian smartphone manufacturers are moving to other operating systems like Windows Phone 8 and Android.

Speaking of Windows Phone, Microsoft’s mobile operating system saw the largest growth over the same quarter last year. Windows Phone was on 3.6 million devices sold during the third quarter compared to 1.5 million devices sold during the same time last year. That’s a growth rate of 140 percent. It may be growing, but Windows Phone still only makes up two percent of the entire market share for smartphones.

Regardless of your allegiance, the smartphone is the real winner today. IDC notes that smartphone shipments have increased 46.4 percent over the same time last year. The continued proliferation of the smartphone and other mobile devices may just help put more computers in the hands of those who need them most.

Do you prefer apps developed for Google platforms or for Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

Also read: Does Google Deserve to be Labeled Evil?

According to the report, 39 percent of the more than 2,000 mobile developers surveyed plan to focus more on Google initiatives than Facebook’s social graph this year. The reason this number is so significant is due to the fact that Facebook dominates the marketplace in most metrics.

It’s important to consider that developers have a very strong sway over the use of any platform. They are, after all, the ones creating the apps that you use. Think about how much Zynga has helped Facebook, by providing users with games like Farmville, Cityville and Mafia Wars. These findings are very significant, and have major implications for Google’s social endeavors. Of course, the Google ecosystem is much larger than just Google+. Google’s Vic Gundotra recently talked about how Google counts users who sign into Google+, and use another Google product within a month, as users. Presumably, this includes Gmail, YouTube, a signed in Google search (complete with Search Plus Your World), Google Reader, etc. According to Gundotra, Google+ has 100 million “30-day active” users.

Google put in a strong showing at the recent Game Developers Conference (granted, so did Facebook).

Michael King, the principal mobile strategist at Appcelerator, told us that because these findings were “so different than what we expected,” they conducted a follow up study to make sure the results were accurate.

“For us, it was extremely surprising. When we put together the survey, we actually thought Facebook would just crush Google in terms of social engagement, and quite frankly, we saw Google make a tremendous showing, given the fact that their social initiatives are pretty much dwarfed by Facebook in every measurable manner,” he said.

They learned that developers are pursuing Google over Facebook for its position in social and mobile. They believe Google is better in terms of its network assets such as YouTube, search, maps, and Android. They also felt Google engages with them better and offers more guidance into how they should approach social applications.

On the other hand, the developers feel that Facebook gives them a long list of what can be done with its API, but then doesn’t offer any direction for how to do it.

“They [Facebook] really need to step up their engagement a little bit in order to get the developers excited about the platforms and to get the developers thinking about different ways to use social in their mobile apps,” said King.

While this data is good news for Google, the study did find some less encouraging news for the search and advertising giant in terms of Android development. The study found that the interest in Android development has dipped more than 10 percent in the past 3 quarters. Incidentally, Mika Mobile announced that it was dropping support for Android earlier this month.

The iOS platform has remained the steady leader, but in the 2nd quarter of last year, Android was within 2 percentage points of it, said King. According to him, Android is dropping due to continued fragmentation of the platform.

“This is a very tough line for them to walk because, if you curtail fragmentation, then there’s no way that a developer can effectively write once and work across multiple Android devices,” King pointed out.

He told us that Google could help to solve this issue by establishing itself as a “centralized authority.” King believes this could help both the distribution and discovery of apps.

Other significant findings in the study pertained to HTML5 and cloud development. For starters, both areas are growing. Around 79 percent of developers said they planned to integrate HTML5 into the apps they build this year. But, only 6 percent of developers will write their entire apps in HTML5. Most developers plan to build hybrid apps using both HTML5 and traditional code.

King told us these results were understandable since HTML5 is not always appropriate for the job.

“HTML5 is only one tool in the bag,” he said. “Or, if you a golf fan, [it's] one club in the bag to help you get to the PGA tour.”

Additionally, developers expressed an increased interest in cloud development, especially in the areas of location and notification. However, King said developers still struggle with understanding how to utilize the cloud.

So, what does all this research mean? Overall, King told us that the mobile/social wars have just begun. He believes that if companies want to succeed in this space, they have to engage with developers.

Furthermore, he suggested that the deeper implications of the data could mean a shift toward Google+ over Facebook. In fact, when asked if Google+ could catch up to Facebook, nearly 70 percent of respondents said it could.

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“If Facebook decides to fall asleep at the wheel here and doesn’t begin to engage those developers, then absolutely Google+ and Google mobile may become the more de facto standard,” said King.

He went on to say that he hopes both companies will respond to this report by building on their strengths and improving their weaknesses.

An interesting thing about Google mobile, however, is that Google continues to tie many of its products and platforms together in more ways, making the larger ecosystem more unified. Think Android, YouTube, Google Play, and Google TV. If what co-founder Sergey Brin said holds up, Chrome and Android will likely merge sooner or later, as well.

If this trend is happening with developers, will it soon transition to consumers too? Tell us what you think.

WebProNews Senior Writer Chris Crum contributed to this report.

“Whether it’s consumers looking for a phone that can tap into several robust ‘app’ ecosystems, businesses looking at deploying tablet devices into their environments, or educational institutions working to update their school’s computer labs, smart, connected, compute-capable devices are playing an increasingly important role in nearly every individual’s life,” said Bob O’Donnell, vice president of Clients and Displays at IDC.

IDC made another prediction that seems astounding: that Windows will lose its leading position of operating system market share to Android by 2016. The prediction is that Windows’ market share will fall to about 25%, while Android’s market share will rise to 31%.

“Android’s growth is tied directly to the propagation of lower-priced devices,” said Tom Mainelli, a research director with ICS. “So, while we expect dozens of hardware vendors to own some share in the Android market, many will find profitability difficult to sustain. Similarly, we expect a large percentage of application developers to continue to focus their efforts on iOS, despite the platform’s smaller overall market share, because iOS end users have proven more willing to pay for high-quality apps.”

IDC claims this amazing market growth will come about as a result of consumers buying multiple devices for themselves and the growth of Asian markets. “Smartphone growth will be driven by Asia/Pacific countries, especially China, where mobile operators are subsidizing the purchase of 3G smartphones, thus increasing the total addressable market,” said Will Stofega, a program director at IDC.

“The cloud is going to have a huge impact on job creation,” says Susan Hauser, Microsoft corporate vice president of the Worldwide Enterprise and Partner Group. “It’s a transformative technology that will drive down costs, spur innovation, and open up new jobs and skillsets across the globe.”

One way in which the cloud is helping companies to be more innovative is by freeing up IT managers to work on more mission-critical projects.

“We deployed Microsoft Office 365 and Windows Intune for one of our clients, and the comment we heard from the chief operations officer is that he can actually schedule a meeting with the IT director to talk about strategic applications,” said Carol Reid, sales director for Agile IT, a Microsoft Tier 3 Cloud Champion Member headquartered in San Diego, Calif. “Whereas before, the IT director was chasing fires and tending to pretty basic plumbing, he now has the bandwidth to pursue truly strategic projects that move the business forward.”

Microsoft has also staked their claim in the cloud with Microsoft Web Apps, their suite of Office software that is accessed via cloud computing, and SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage service. The services are accessible via computer or mobile device.

“For most organizations, cloud computing should be a no-brainer, given its ability to increase IT innovation and flexibility, lower capital costs, and help generate revenues that are multiples of spending,” said John F. Gantz, chief research officer and senior vice president at IDC. “A common misperception is cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth it will be a job creator — a major one. And job growth will occur across continents and throughout organizations of all sizes because emerging markets, small cities and small businesses have the same access to cloud benefits as large enterprises or developed nations.”

The report also indicates specific industries will generate job growth at different rates, and that public cloud investments will drive faster job growth than private cloud investments. Microsoft also estimates that cloud–related jobs will accrue evenly to businesses with 500 or fewer employees and those with more than 500 employees.

The booming economies of China and India are expected to account for nearly half of all new cloud-related jobs. China, in fact, is estimated to create nearly five million jobs thanks to investments in cloud computing. To illustrate more on how cloud computing will develop across the world, Microsoft put together a small infographic that details the global impact of cloud services on different countries’ economies.

Ultimately, the cloud will be an important force in helping to restore worldwide economic health, Hauser said. “The cloud is the No. 1 topic among CIOs from around the world,” she added. “They want to know how they can use it to fuel growth. And they want to be sure they have the right people and skills in place to make it happen.”

As mobile customers look to equip phones that can do more, the market for non-smartphones will continue to decline. According to the IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the market for smartphones will grow four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.

“Overall market growth in 2010 was exceptional,” said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. “Last year’s high market growth was due in part to pent-up demand from a challenging 2009, when many buyers held off on mobile phone purchases. The expected market growth for 2011, while still notable, will taper off somewhat from what we saw in 2010.”

The IDC report also projected market share for particular devices, saying that the Android operating system will take over the #1 spot by a wide margin in 2011. It is projected to garner 39.5% of the market. The next closest competitor is projected to be the Symbian OS, with 20.9% share.

The recent news that Nokia will abandon the Symbian OS in favor of the Windows phone has greatly shifted projections for 2015. The Windows phone is now looking to take over the #2 spot in 4 years, according to the IDC: “The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform. We expect the first devices to launch in 2012. By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be number 2 operating system worldwide behind Android.”

Apple’s share decreased from 93 percent in Q310 to 73 percent in Q410, but still showed its solid leadership position. The Samsung Galaxy Tab was the main competitor during the holiday season, accounting for more than 17 percent share.

IDC found that the eReader market also increased significantly in the fourth quarter. Strong sales of Amazon’s Kindle, as well as significant gains from competitors such as Pandigital, Barnes & Noble, Hanvon, and Sony among others, contributed to market growth.

In Q410, the eReader market more than doubled volume from the previous quarter, with more than 6 million units shipped for the quarter, bringing the full-year total to 12.8 million units shipped. eReader shipments were also up more than 325% from 2009 when roughly 3 million units shipped.

“Strong holiday sales of media tablets were in line with IDC projections and strong consumer interest in the category while device vendors scrambled to offer products competitive with Apple’s iPad and now iPad 2,” said Loren Loverde, vice president, Consumer Device Trackers.

“Media Tablets are on pace to reach shipments of roughly 50 million units in 2011.”

According to IDC, the United States, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) regions accounted for 89% of all media tablet shipments in 4Q10. Although the United States remained the largest country market, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) grew almost twice as fast from Q310 to Q410 and Western Europe saw a slightly larger jump in shipments in 4Q10.

In Q410, retailers were the channel with the highest share of shipments, followed by direct and telco sales. A new channel for media tablets, the telco operators, accounted for nearly 14% of all shipments of media tablets in 4Q10

Vendors shipped 401.4 million units in Q4 compared to 340.5 million units in Q4 of 2009. Vendors shipped a total of 1.39 billion units on a cumulative worldwide basis in 2010, up 18.5% from the 1.17 billion units shipped in 2009.

The strong quarterly and annual growth comes after a weak 2009, which saw the market decline by 1.6%. A stronger economy and a wider array of increasingly affordable smartphones helped lift the market to its highest annual growth rate since 2006 when it grew 22.6%.

"The mobile phone market has the wind behind its sails," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker.

"Mobile phone users are eager to swap out older devices for ones that handle data as well as voice, which is driving growth and replacement cycles."

It’s not just smartphone-focused suppliers that capitalized on the mobile phone market’s renewed growth last year. ZTE, a company that sells primarily lower-cost feature phones in emerging markets, moved into the number 4 position worldwide in 4Q10. It is the first quarter the Chinese handset maker finished among IDC’s Top 5 vendors.

"Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year," added Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team.

"Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list."