Intel mourns the death of back-to-school PC purchases

The rise of tablets and other mobile devices are affecting the sales of PCs. Intel knows that. They were just hoping that it hadn’t hit the back-to-school bump that they always get. It did.

Perhaps this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that sales of personal computers have in recent quarters collapsed to levels not seen since records have been kept. But the latest look at the state of the personal computer market doesn’t appear to bode well for the industry’s biggest supplier of microprocessors, Intel.

Every September, the PC industry’s eyes turn toward indications that demand has surged during the back-to-school season, which is often an early indicator of the holiday season’s demand. Analyst Vijay Rakesh of Sterne Agee has checked in on the latest word from the companies that manufacturer machines for Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others, and finds that there’s little hope left for a bounce off of the bottom in 2013.