Companies in the cloud computing market will likely have smiles on their faces as earnings season begins this week, as the technology's been tipped for even more growth, while PC sales continue to slump.

Facing an uncertain financial outlook for the near future, businesses have been tightening their belts for the past several years, with many turning to cloud computing as a possible solution to bloated IT spending.

Online firms - such as Facebook - have been best showing the general trend among business as a whole in computing, expanding data centres, but not necessarily complementing this with new PC uptake.

"The area of strength is still data centres, the cloud," Kevin Cassidy, a chip analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, told Reuters. "You have Facebook building out their data centres ... five football fields large."

"It's server demand, specifically emerging-market server demand," Evercore Partners analyst Patrick Wang said. "Companies tied to the cloud and data centres are doing relatively better, there's no question."

Meanwhile, PC manufacturers fear the worst as the sales of desktops and even laptop computers have been slipping. Though Apple seems to be able to weather such a climate, most hardware makers have felt the pinch.

"I would not want to be in the hardware business right now," fund manager Michael Yoshikami of YCMNET Advisors said. "Cloud companies are going to continue to accelerate, but PC companies generally are going to continue to suffer."

Cloud uptake goes up while PCs plummet