Lenovo secured the top spot in the worldwide PC market with growth of 10.7%, while HP Inc. dropped to the second position at 6.2% growth rate
World’s leading research and advisory company Gartner, Inc. says that the global PC market experienced flat growth in the third quarter of 2018, driven by steady corporate PC demand.
Worldwide PC shipments was recorded at 67.2 million units in the third quarter of 2018, a 0.1 percent increase from the third quarter of 2017, according to preliminary results by Gartner.
Whereas EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan experienced growth in the third quarter of 2018, the U.S. and Latin America saw a decline.
PC shipments in EMEA reached 18.9 million units in the third quarter of 2018, a 1.1 percent increase year over year. Consumer PC demand overall continued to decline, while sales of business PCs remained the one thing sustaining the market. PC shipments in Asia/Pacific totaled 24.3 million units, a 0.3 percent increase from the third quarter of 2017. PC demand from the commercial segment buoyed the market.
Latin America showed the steepest decline of 8.5 percent after showing some stabilization earlier in 2018. In the U.S. PC market, shipments declined 0.4 percent compared with the third quarter of 2017.While desktop shipments were flat, mobile PC shipments slightly declined compared with a year ago. The major driver of the market continued to be business PC demand.
“The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
Lenovo wins top spot in worldwide PC market
Lenovo secured the top spot in the worldwide PC market with growth of 10.7 percent, driven by regained traction in the commercial market and its joint venture with Fujitsu. HP Inc. dropped to the second position with 6.2 percent growth rate, but recorded its fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment growth. HP showed strong desktop shipment growth, which indicated strong demand among corporate buyers.
Dell experienced its 10th consecutive quarter of shipment growth, with growth of 5.3 percent in the third quarter of 2018. Dell did well in EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan, showing growth in both desktop and mobile PCs in these regions. However, Dell’s shipments declined in Latin America and the U.S. due to the weakness in the mobile PC market.
Impact on overall PC demand due to CPU shortage
Kitagawa noted that CPU shortage could bring new challenges to PC market, but it won’t Impact demand.
“Although the third-quarter results did not show any material impact, the Intel CPU shortage could influence the PC market moving forward with price increases and changes to the vendor landscape,” he said.
Gartner predicts that while this shortage will have some short-term impacts, it wont have any lasting impact on overall PC demand.
“Current expectation is that the shortage will continue into 2019, but Intel will prioritize the high-end CPU as well as the CPUs for business PCs. In the meantime, AMD will pick up the part of the market where Intel cannot supply CPUs,” Kitagawa explained.
Gartner will soon make the final statistics available to clients of its PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region program.
