What? EMEA PC sales dropped by HOW much?

Figures plunge into toilet with sufficient force to drench bathroom

With tech distributors and retailers suffering PC inventory indigestion in EMEA, shipments into the region during Q2 were always likely to be bad, and they didn’t disappoint.

Some 18.6 million desktops, notebooks and premium ultra mobiles found their way into outlets in the three months, that is down 15.7 per cent, or 3.47 million fewer units, year on year.

“The [preliminary] PC results in EMEA saw variations among the countries,” said Isabelle Durand, principal beanie at Gartner.

Demand in Western Europe slowed, albeit against a tough comparison period a year ago when businesses were swapping out Windows XP machines, and in Eurasia, where the challenged economies in Russia and Ukraine damped spending.

Eastern Europe recorded single digit growth with consumers and SMEs helping out, and the Middle East and Africa is facing political instability and currency fluctuations.

“Vendors spent most of the quarter managing high inventory levels,” said Durand, and “they tried to clear the inventory with promotions and absorbed this with lower margins.”

Windows 10 launches this month, and as such Gartner expects the channel to have cleared some of the decks in preparation for a renewed sales push.

Each of the major top five protagonists reported double digit declines in the region, including third-placed Dell.

HP shipments into the channel fell 13.9 per cent to 3.89 million units, and Lenovo’s seemingly never ending run of growth came to an abrupt end with a decline of 13.1 per cent to 3.4 million; the Chinese firm is nursing the worst inventory hangover.

Dell dropped to 2.04 million PCs sold, Asus dropped 17.6 per cent to 1.85 million, and Acer was down by 32.6 per cent to 1.72 million. The ‘others’ category declined 15.2 per cent to 5.69 million units.

Still, there's always next quarter. ®