Surprise! The global PC monitor market sees positive growth for a change
The PC market might still be in the doldrums, but there’s good news in the screen department at least. After three quarters of solid decline, the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker finally reports some growth.
Although year-over-year growth was down -8.6 percent in 3Q13, due to the ongoing decline in PC sales, monitor shipments topped more than 35 million units, 1.2 million over the forecast, and showed an increase of 4.5 percent compared to the previous quarter.
"Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ), Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) outperformed the overall market in the third quarter and increased their regional market shares," says Jennifer Song, Research Analyst, Worldwide Trackers at IDC. "China and India were the top growth drivers within APeJ, while Germany and Russia were the leading country markets in Europe".
As to quarter four? Well IDC is forecasting a return to bad news with a quarter-over-quarter decline of -3.2 percent in worldwide shipments to 33.9 million units, and a year-over-year decline of -8.5 percent, although that’s an improvement on previous forecasts.
Highlights from the report include:
- LED backlight technology adoption continues to increase with 84.9 percent market share in 3Q13. This represents a year-over-year increase of 14.4 percentage points.
- Screen size of 21.x-inches wide has held the largest worldwide share for the last four quarters, with 21.4 percent share in 3Q13.
- Aspect ratio of 16:9 continues to dominate with 77.5 percent market share, which is more than four times the second most widely used aspect ratio of 16:10.
- Monitors with TV tuners are expected to grow to 7.7 percent market share by 2017, up from 5.7 percent share in 2013, led by LG and Samsung with a combined market share of 95 percent in this category.
- While touchscreen monitors are still a small segment of the total PC monitor market at 0.3 percent share, it is mostly in the US at 48.6 percent share with Dell holding a 28.6 percent portion of the US market.
Worldwide PC Monitor Unit Shipments, Market Share, and Year-over-Year Growth, Third Quarter 2013
| Vendors |
3Q13 Unit Shipments |
3Q13 Market Share |
3Q12 Unit Shipments |
3Q12 Market Share |
3Q13/3Q12 Growth |
| 1. Dell |
4,852,437 |
13.9% |
4,816,777 |
12.6% |
0.7% |
| 2. Samsung |
4,250,894 |
12.1% |
5,962,887 |
15.6% |
-28.7% |
| 3. HP |
3,798,672 |
10.8% |
4,159,171 |
10.9% |
-8.7% |
| 4. LG |
3,469,994 |
9.9% |
3,507,322 |
9.2% |
-1.1% |
| 5. AOC |
3,199,166 |
9.1% |
3,142,615 |
8.2% |
1.8% |
| All Vendors |
35,035,610 |
100% |
38,311,764 |
100% |
-8.6% |
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker, December 2013.
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