Canalys reports that after 8 long years of stagnation, the PC market has finally recorded its first full year of growth. According to Canalys, a total of 268.1 million units were shipped globally in 2019, which is a 2.7% over 2018. The top three vendors of vendors this year were Lenovo, HP and Dell who make up the bulk of sales for desktops, notebooks and workstations.
Ishan Dutt, an analyst at Canalys, claims that PCs had a very impressive holiday turnout. “This is impressive given the market registered record growth in Q3. Despite supply chain issues, vendors remain bullish, especially in commercial. Intel’s continued efforts to improve supply will help maintain volume in 2020, but constraints are unlikely to ease quickly. The upshot, however, is the upgrade opportunities OEMs have with SMBs who have delayed refreshes in anticipation of new chipsets.”
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Lenovo has shipped 64.8 million units registering an 8.6 per cent growth. This was closely followed by HP that has registered a 4.7 per cent growth. Dell took the third spot with 46.5 million PCs shipped, recording a 5.3 per cent growth this year. Apple took the fourth spot with 19.1 million units and 3.3 per cent annual growth. Acer, at number fifth position, shipped a total of 17 million units, registering an annual decline of 5.3 per cent. Whereas Acer maintained the fifth spot.
“This past year was a wild one in the PC world, which resulted in impressive market growth that ultimately ended seven consecutive years of market contraction,” said IDC program veep Ryan Reith. He said that despite emerging form factors and demand for mobile computing, the bounce was a “clear sign PC demand is still there.” Shipments in three of the four quarters last year were up, IDC added.
Both research houses concurred that businesses fleeing Windows 7 – which has ran out of official support – was the main driver. Mikako Kitagawa, senior principal analyst, described it as “vibrant business demand.” “Contrasted against the ongoing weakness in consumer PC demand, business PC demand has led to unit growth in five of the last seven quarter,” she added.
Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC, sounded a note of caution before the PC vendors get carried away on a way of growth. “Despite the positivity surrounding 2019, the next 12 to 18 months will be challenging for traditional PCs, as the majority of Windows 10 upgrades will be in the rearview mirror and lingering concerns around component shortages and trade negotiations get ironed out.”
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(Source)
