PC shipments continue to decline, but things are looking up

Worldwide PC shipments are still in decline, but they’re showing slow signs of recovery, according to new and preliminary market research results by Gartner. In the second quarter of 2016, 64.3 million units were shipped, equating to a 5.2 percent decline compared to a year before.

This is the seventh consecutive quarter PC shipments have been falling, but Gartner says there’s no reason to despair.

"One of the ongoing problems in the PC market has been the price hike in selected regions due to the weakening local currency against the US dollar", says Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "The price issue has impacted the EMEA and Latin America regions for the past year. However, PC shipment declines became rather modest in the second quarter compared with previous quarters, which suggests a fading currency impact".

Lenovo is still the number one company in the world, even though it too experienced a 2.2 percent decline in shipments. The company is followed by HP, Dell and Asus.

In Q2, 15.2 million PCs were shipped in the US, a 1.4 percent increase year-over-year, following five consecutive quarters of decline.

"While vendors and channels generally have more optimistic expectations of PC sales compared with the past, there is still a chance to have a potential inventory built. This will depend on how PC market demand picks up in the second half of this year for both the business and consumer segments", Kitagawa says.

"The second and third quarter are typically PC buying season for the US public sectors. Positive second-quarter results could suggest healthy PC sales activities among the public sectors. There is an opportunity for a Windows 10 refresh among businesses, which we expect to see more toward the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017".

Gartner’s full report can be found on this link.

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