With all the economic prophecies of doom and gloom, plus talk of a deep worldwide recession; enhanced of course by the news media, who are making money from doom-mongering, you’d imagine that all industries were having a bad year during 2008. – But you’d be wrong: The computer industry’s retail sector, although having unexpected results, appears to be doing rather well:

The US figures for November 2008, released by the research firm, NPD Group, indicate that, while Apple made no progress but no losses either in this area, sales of PCs were up 7%.

-This despite the fact that sales of desktop PCs dropped by 20% overall. The fact seems to be that people are going for notebooks these days.

According to NPD analyst Stephen Barker: "For notebooks, there is a little extra value to consumers [to buy Apple], for desktops I’m not so sure. To me the real story is the iMacs need a refresh."

The forecast for this sector from IDC , which tracks sales of technology products, appears to nonetheless be rather gloomy: IDC said earlier this month that it expects global PC sales to fall 5.3% next year to $267 billion (£174.7 billion).

Would anyone care to speculate an opinion on their own thought regarding this? There is a comments section below, and you are allowed to use it. Who knows; people might just enjoy reading your comments too?