Holiday sales of PCs slide for first time in five years: IDC

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Holiday season sales of personal computers fell for the first time in more than five years, according to tech industry tracker IDC, as Microsoft Corp's new Windows 8 operating system failed to excite buyers and many opted for tablet devices and powerful smartphones instead of PCs.

PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co, Lenovo Group and Dell Inc sold 89.8 million PCs worldwide in the fourth quarter of last year, down 6.4 percent from the same quarter of 2011. That was slightly worse than expected by most.

For all of 2012, 352 million PCs were sold, down 3.2 percent from 2011. That was the first annual decline since 2001, according to IDC.