PC sales in the Western Europe have crashed, according to research by Gartner.
The group’s findings show an 11.4% reduction in third quarter PC sales in 2011 compared to 2010.
The main victim is the netbook, which suffered a 40% collapse in sales.
However, it’s not just netbook vendors that have seen a slump.
The mobile PC market (which includes the netbook) and the desktop market have also registered a sharp decline of around 10% each.
Despite the third quarter traditionally being a strong period with back-to-school sales, the decline could be set to continue, with
flooding in Thailand affecting factories that manufacture hard drives for PCs.
One reason for the decline is the availability of notebooks, which cost around the same price as their smaller cousin.
Tablets, such as the iPad, have also taken a bite out of the netbook market.
"Netbooks originally took off around 2008 almost by accident as people craved a cheap, basic and portable mobile computing solution when away from their heavyweight desktops," Matt Hill, deputy editor of T3 tells The Huffington Post UK.
"However, since then tablets and high-end smartphones have increasingly provided a more user-friendly halfway-house experience, with the sexy designs and marketing budgets to match, while manufacturers have worked hard at making higher-spec laptops and notebooks ever thinner and increasingly cheap, meaning many users only need one computer for all purposes."