The global PC market shrank 4.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, with shipments totaling 58.52 million, data compiled by Gartner Inc showed.
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) was ahead of the game with annual growth of 6.9 percent and shipments totaling about 13.2 million units, the research company said in a report on Wednesday last week.
HP Inc came in second at 12.83 million units, representing annual growth of 0.8 percent, followed by Dell Inc, which was the only other firm to report positive year-on-year growth at 1.5 percent, with shipments totaling 9.99 million units, Gartner Inc said.
However, data compiled by International Data Corp placed HP first and Lenovo second.
The top three vendors contributed to 61.5 percent of global PC shipments, up from 56.9 percent during the same quarter last year, Gartner said.
Apple Inc, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) and Acer Inc (宏碁) lagged behind, with shipments falling at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, 7.3 percent and 13.2 percent.
Each of those PC makers saw their shipments drop to less than 4 million units in the first quarter.
“Anticipation of a disruption by CPU shortages impacted all PC markets, as vendors allocated to the higher-margin business and Chromebook segment,” Gartner senior principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said.
“While the consumer market remained weak, the mix of product availability may have also hindered demand,” she added.
PC shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa declined 2.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, due to weak consumer demand, but demand for enterprise PCs increased.
PC shipments in the Asia-Pacific region fell 5.1 percent year-on-year, although Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Xiaomi Corp (小米) drove market demand with aggressive pricing on light mobile PCs.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the