PC Shipment Decline Slows In Q2, Says Gartner

The PC market is showing initial signs of stabilisation in the second quarter, after seven consecutive quarters of year-over-year decline.

This is the conclusion of analyst house Gartner, which found that worldwide PC shipments totalled 59.7 million units in the second quarter of 2023, a 16.6 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2022.

The data from Gartner backs recent research from Canalys, which found that the worldwide PC market decline had slowed in Q2 2023, with total shipments of desktops and notebooks down 11.5 percent year on year to 62.1 million units.

Gartner: PC shipments

Gartner however states that its preliminary results of 59.7 million units shipped in Q2 shows that after seven consecutive quarters of year-over-year decline, the PC market is showing initial signs of stabilisation.

It said this also includes sequential growth from the previous quarter.

“The rate of decline in the PC market has slowed, indicating that shipment volumes may have reached their lowest point,” said Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner.

“There has been progress in reducing PC inventory after more than a year of issues, supported by a gradual increase in business PC demand. Gartner expects that PC inventory will normalise by the end of 2023, and PC demand will return to growth starting in 2024.”

The PC leaderboard also remains unchanged in Q2, with Lenovo maintaining the top spot in shipments with 24 percent market. Second place is HP with 22.5 percent market share; third is Dell with 17.4 percent; fourth is Apple with 8.9 percent; fifth is Acer with 6.7 percent; and sixth is ASUS with 6.5 percent.

Gartner said that Lenovo’s year-over-year shipments declined again this quarter but grew sequentially. EMEA and Asia Pacific were challenging regions for Lenovo, but the company had only moderate declines in Latin America and North America.

Gartner also said HP shipments fell only slightly in the second quarter, ending a string of consecutive double-digit declines. Laptop shipments grew modestly but were offset by a decline in desktop shipments. The US laptop market was robust for HP, with double-digit year-over-year growth.

Meanwhile according to Gartner, Dell exhibited its fifth consecutive quarter of decline, with shipments down across most key regions. Asia Pacific was the most challenging market for Dell, where shipments decreased faster than the regional average, said the analyst house. Dell did relatively well in the US desktop market, maintaining the top vendor position it added.

Prices, availability

“PC component prices and availability have improved drastically, helping stabilise vendor profitability despite the pricing pressure to clear inventory,” said Kitagawa.

“However, as the PC market begins to recover and component demand increases, the favourable price conditions for memory and SSD storage that PC vendors have enjoyed are coming to an end,” said Kitagawa.

Gartner noted that the US economy was relatively stable, easing concerns among small and midsize business buyers (SMBs) and gradually generating PC demand.

There was also a refresh in demand for Chromebooks from educational institutions, as well as laptops among government buyers. However, consumer PC demand remained weak in the US, Gartner noted.

The EMEA PC market declined 14.6 percent year-over-year, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of decline, the analyst stated. Continued political unrest, inflationary pressures and interest rate increases continued to impact demand for PCs, concluded Gartner.

“The disruptive business outlook is limiting business PC spending in EMEA, as companies reduce PC budgets as a cost management strategy,” said Kitagawa. “Business confidence must increase to influence stronger PC buying patterns. Meanwhile, consumer demand remains low, as all income brackets are affected by inflationary pressures.”

The Asia Pacific PC market also continued to fall, declining 26.9 percent year-over-year according to the analyst group. It said that a particularly weak PC market in China due to economic uncertainty and low consumer demand contributed significantly to the region’s results.