Tablet shipments are also on track for contraction, with shipments anticipated to be at 192 million units in 2015, a fall of 13 per cent from the previous year. The lost shipments in the subcategory can be chalked up to falling sales of desktop and laptop PCs, which are forecast to fall from 277 million units sold to 247 million between 2014 and 2015.

The downgrade is a result of a slower replacement cycle for all devices, the market researcher said: “Users are extending the lifetime of their devices, or deciding not to replace their devices at all”.

The reason is thast users are “replacing” one thing with another, leading to share shift between things that is not creating any net growth in aggregate. “In 2016, we expect currency impacts will negate and while Windows 10 products on the Intel Skylake platform will increase in volumes throughout the year, Windows 10 adoption among businesses will ramp sharply in 2017, where we expect the PC market to return to a four per cent growth”.

In a study published today, Gartner says that sales of devices, including PCs, tablets, ultramobiles, and mobile phones, are expected to drop 1 percent this year as compared to 2014 and reach 2.4 billion units, which is totally opposite to the 1.5 percent growth the same firm previously forecasted.

One bright spot is mobile phones, which is the only category the company predicts will ship more units in 2015. Its user survey conducted in June across six countries found that 44 percent of current tablet users are planning to substitute their tablets with a different device. In 2017, mobile phones will reach 2 billion.

The expected increase in PCs in 2017 pales in comparison to smartphones, owing to the personal nature of increasingly more powerful smartphones and the decline in costs, especially for Android models.

The increase in the period of time for using a smartphone has led Apple to implement an Upgrade Program to allow customers to buy iPhones on an installment plan, something that Samsung is expected to emulate, Entner said.

The other factor is of course the economy – customers won’t want to make several large payouts for new computing devices if their older ones work just fine.

As for the iPhone 6S, arriving on Friday, Nguyen said new features like force touch will have to be tried and tested in the crucible of new apps from developers.