PC market shambling towards an unquiet grave

Gartner, IDC Q1 numbers have landed, and they're not pretty

The ongoing decline in PC shipments has continued in Q1 2016, according to Gartner and IDC.

Depending on which set of numbers you prefer, the cold number is that between 60.6 million (IDC) and 64.8 million (Gartner) machines shipped in the quarter.

The misery is clear in the table below.

Vendor	Gartner Q1 shipments (thousands)	Gartner Q1 market share	Gartner Year-on-Year Q1 growth	IDC Q1 shipments (thousands)	IDC Q1 market share	IDC Year-on-Year Q1 growth
Lenovo	12,484	19.3%	-7.2%	12,178	20.1%	-8.5%
HP Inc	11,408	17.6%	-9.0%	11,603	19.2%	-10.8%
Dell	9,145	14.1%	-0.4%	9,017	14.9%	-2.0%
Asus	5,365	8.3%	1.5%	4,392	7.2%	-8.3%
Apple	4,611	7.1%	1.0%	4,466	7.4%	-2.1%
Others	21,764	33.6%	-18.4%	18,929	31.2%	-19.8%
Total	64,777		-9.6%	60,584		-11.5%

The two are agreed that the market remains in sharp decline. IDC says the market fell by 11.5 per cent in the quarter, while Gartner's more optimistic less hideously pessimistic take puts the decline at 9.6 per cent.

Gartner reckons Asus (1.5 per cent up) and Apple (1 per cent up) managed to grow in the quarter, but IDC disagrees, giving Asus an 8.3 per cent year-on-year decline and saying Apple was 2.1 per cent down.

Minor brands and white-box shipments could be described as being in utter collapse, falling by between 18.4 and 19.8 per cent.

IDC says the market is prey to pressures both in the home market (nobody wants to upgrade) and the commercial market (competition from other infrastructure upgrades).

IDC says Dell has overtaken HP Inc in America, which helped limit its declines, and while Lenovo fell on a global basis, it grew 20 per cent in the US.

Gartner adds that a rising US dollar and a collapse in Latin American markets are also weighing down the market. For home users, smartphones rather than PCs are the priority tech spend, Gartner said, and businesses aren't going to be running Windows 10 upgrades in quantity until the end of the year. ®