Global PC shipments down over 10 percent for 2015

Newsbrief: Research firm IDC reports that the global PC market was down 10.6 percent in 2015 -- a significant downtrend and the largest in history, according to IDC.

This comes on top of a 9.8 percent decline in 2013, and 2.1 percent last year. IDC lays the blame at longer PC life-cycles and, of course, competition from smartphones and tablets. Windows 10 may have been released in 2015, but IDC maintains that this spurred sales in 2014, instead.

The U.S. PC market in specific fell 4.3 percent year-over-year to 17.4 million units. 

There's a lot more detail in IDC's press release, which breaks data down by region and further explains the impact of Windows 10 (which is more complicated than you might expect).