The PC industry does not seem to be out of the woods yet as the recently released worldwide PC shipments data for third-quarter 2015 by two independent research firms – Gartner Inc.
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The Research Manager at IDC Worldwide PC tracker, Jay Chou said even when the PC market is expected weaken, he has a positive outlook on PC shipments.
Jefferies equity analyst Ken Hui said in a report that Lenovo was earlier “expected to meet [market] consensus of 10 to 15 per cent quarter-on-quarter shipment growth in the third calendar quarter”. But it predicts that the Christmas season will change this, as the “Windows 10 rollout will ramp up in 4Q15 holiday sales”. In Gartner’s 2015 personal technology survey, half of consumers expressed their intent to buy a PC in the next 12 months compared with 21% for tablet purchase intention.
A strong US dollar and the anticipated lull as consumers await systems with Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system and Intel’s new “Skylake” processors conspired to create a brutal environment for the global PC market in the third quarter, according to analysts with IDC and Gartner.
In its preliminary results, Gartner has identified a strong U.S. dollar as a reason for a decline in PC shipments, with impacted regions including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, and Latin America.
IDC found that out of 71 million global PC shipments were down by 10 percent year-over-year, and Gartner says shipments declined by 7.7 percent at $73.7 million. We believe the new hybrid laptop/tablet devices are the next stage in the evolution of PCs, one that could catch a great deal of attention from the user base.
Dell at number three shipped more than 10 million units, registering a year-over-year decline of minus 2.9 percent.
Chou said that the lackluster volume of PC shipments has come in line with expectations that the third quarter would face challenging financial conditions and would be a changeover period.
“Apple continued to outperform other vendors, moving to No. 3 in the United States and boosting share globally as well as domestically”, IDC noted.
“Still, there is a few hope in the fourth quarter”, stated Linn Huang, IDC Research Director, Devices & Displays.
Companies also struggled to limit price swings as shifting currency exchange rates inhibited PC shipments in the quarter, according to IDC. “However, this reduction in purchasing is not a downturn; it is a reshaping of the market driven by currency”.
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The difference in results is mainly due to different techniques used for tracking PC sales as well as the inclusion and/or exclusion of certain products. Desktop machines continue to fare the worst, while portable machines such as laptops and ultrabooks saw a much smaller decline.
