IDC has released its PC market numbers from the second quarter of 2009, and they indicate that shipments and prices are still dropping. The desktop PC continues its secular decline, while netbooks, as usual, are still sucking up all the oxygen in the mobile space.

IDC's has released its market report for the second quarter of 2009, and it contains little in the way of good news for beleaguered PC vendors. Worldwide PC shipments are down 2.4 percent year-over-year, as businesses and consumers continued to hold off on upgrades and new purchases. Adding to the misery was serious margin compression—aggressive discounting meant that the value of PC shipments declined by 19.1 percent during that period.

The one bright spot in the numbers was (wait for it)... netbooks. Except that the continued popularity of the sub-$400, low-margin, consumer-oriented netbook isn't really a bright spot—it's more like a rash that's symptomatic of the PC market's ongoing illness. The IDC report indicates that the desktop PC is in double-digit decline, but of course part of that decline is secular, the evidence of the long-term industry-wide shift from desktops to notebooks. Business portables, though, saw depressed growth rates at 16 percent.