It appears that PC shipments are not doing quite well over the last years. The numbers continue to drop and the latest reports that just came out today from Gartner and IDC confirm this trend. Compared to the same semester of the last year the shrink is quite drastic, 11 percent. Maybe now it’s the last call for the big companies you see in the chart to come up with something new, otherwise they might risk going backwards.
This dropping trend of PC shipments acts worldwide and all companies are affected. As we can see in the first image(from Gartner), Acer and ASUS were the companies that recorded the highest drop in the second semester of 2013, with 35.3 and 20.5 percent less PC delivered.
If you check the stats of the PC shipments in the U.S.(from Gartner) you spot something strange. There are two companies, Dell and Lenovo that recorded growth. Compared with the same period of 2012, Dell recorded a 6.4 percent growth, while Lenovo went beyond this recording a 19.7 percent growth. One explanation could be the advertising campaigns both companies run in the U.S. and also an avid technology country. IDC report also strengthens this trend with slight different numbers.
Gartner thinks that this decline was due to the shift in usage away from notebooks to tablets with the transition to the new Haswell-based products as one of the cause. Personally, I just think people don’t have the time and patience anymore to use a PC and want a portable device that can deliver almost the same experience. Windows 8 could be a reason, knowing that there are a lot of people that don’ like and the numbers can confirm this easily.
Overall, Lenovo seems to be the only winner of this droppings since they overtake HP and now lead the PC shipments market with 16.7 percent market share. HP is still there with 16.3 percent market share, but I think they have a lot of chances to come back in the first place once their Haswell-based devices come out.
Source: Gartner, IDC
