Have smartphones and tablets really replaced the PC as the business tool of choice in South Africa? Well Samsung may just have answered that question for us today with the announcement that the electronics giant stopped shipping notebooks at the end of April in South Africa.

Samsung has now joined one of its primary competitors, Sony, who exited the PC business in February to focus on tablets and smartphones. According to reports towards the end of last year, Samsung had more than 50% marketshare for smartphone sales here, but the competition has been increasing from Sony, LG, Hauwei and Apple over recent months.

Samsung cites IDC figures which showed an an 18.8% decline in PC shipments in South Africa in the last three months of 2013. At the same time tablet shipments in the same time frame (according to the IDC). South Africa is not the only country in Africa where the traditional PC market has seen major declines, and IDC also reported a massive 31.6% drop in shipments to the eastern African region in the first three months of this year.

Owners of Samsung notebooks need not worry about being left in the lurch now that the company no longer sells them in the country. Samsung has offered assurances that all product warranties will remain in place and that support for its notebooks will still be available at all of its Samsung Smart Care Centres in the country.

In related news, Samsung has also just replaced its head of mobile design, Chang Dong-hoon.

While many will lament the decline of the traditional PC, the fact that tablets have seen such a massive growth spurt in the same period of time bodes well for the PC industry as a whole which, as we’ve argued previously, includes tablets as well.