Worldwide PC shipments fell by 9.5 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, hurt by restrained corporate technology spending and the strength of the US dollar, market researcher Gartner Inc said on Thursday.
Manufacturers shipped 68.4 million units last quarter, compared with 75.6 million a year earlier, the steepest annual decline since the third quarter of 2013. US unit sales fell 5.8 percent to 15.1 million, with desktop PCs hit particularly hard, Gartner said in a report.
The second quarter’s decline, following a 5.2 percent annual drop in the prior period, underscores the persistent challenges for PC makers in an increasingly mobile world dominated by smartphones and tablets. Consumers in emerging economies are buying fewer PCs, and corporations have moderated spending on technology following a slight bump in the middle of last year. PC shipments are forecast to post their fourth straight consecutive annual decline this year.
“When people look at the market decline by 10 percent they will say: ‘Oh my God this year is going to be dead’ — that’s not true,” Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in an interview. “We think the market is going to go to a low-single-digit growth in 2016 and ongoing, because fundamentally people are going to keep buying PCs, but market size is shrinking due to different devices.”
The strength of the US dollar has caused prices to rise for PCs in other currencies and this might have affected demand, Gartner said.
Rival researcher International Data Corp (IDC), which does not include tablets in its tally, also said global shipments slumped by 11.8 percent to 66.1 million units in the period, with the US market declining by 3.3 percent. The research firm attributed the drop to many of the same reasons highlighted by Gartner.
The slump last quarter took a toll on some PC-dependent companies, with microprocessor provider Advanced Micro Devices Inc lowering its quarterly sales forecast on Monday and memorychip maker Micron Technologies Inc doing the same last month.
Demand for PCs has been slightly depressed because of the coming introduction of Microsoft Corp’s next operating system, Windows 10, which is slated for the third quarter. The new software might not rejuvenate the PC market in the way it has in the past, because “many users will opt for a free OS upgrade rather than buying a new PC,” IDC vice president Loren Loverde said in a statement.
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) widened its lead as the top global supplier with a 19.7 percent share of the market, Gartner said. The company shipped 13.5 million PCs, down 6.8 percent from a year earlier. Hewlett-Packard Co’s shipments fell by 9.5 percent to 11.9 million, followed by Dell Inc, whose shipments shrank by 4.9 percent.
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