Gartner says back-to-school PC sales failed. IDC says they worked

Whatever's going on, overall sales are down leaving HP Inc and Lenovo lords of a shrinking land

Analyst outfits Gartner and IDC have reached opposing conclusions on the same set of events.

Both chose Tuesday to release their quarterly count of PC sales for the year's third quarter.

Gartner's principal analyst Mika Kitagawa proclaimed the quarter was a “very weak back-to-school sales season” and the firm reported a 3.6 per cent year-on-year shipments dip in terms of units shipped. IDC's take on things said “back-to-school promotions helped boost results” but just a 0.5 per cent shipments dip.

IDC said component shortages have eased and didn't impact shipments or sales unduly, at least for the big PC-makers. Gartner says component prices kept prices high and vendors suppressed the market by passing them on to consumers.

Both firms' data also note the decline of “other” manufacturers, which now scrap for about a quarter of the market. IDC reckons component prices bite hard outside the big PC players. Given that the likes of Fujitsu and Toshiba are in the “other” pile, The Register suspects things are even harder for white box PC-makers.

Both firms find HP Inc and Lenovo in first and second place respectively, by shipments, followed by Dell. As the tables below show, some vendors are able to win a little growth in market share, but overall things are still on the slide.

Here's Gartner's Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q17. Shipments are recorded in thousands of units.

	3Q17 Shipments	3Q17 Market Share (%)	3Q16 Shipments	3Q16 Market Share (%)	3Q17-3Q16 Growth (%)
HP Inc.	14,592	21.8	13,983	20.1	4.4
Lenovo	14,356	21.4	14,576	21	-1.5
Dell	10,154	15.2	10,194	14.7	-0.4
ASUS	4,892	7.3	5,373	7.7	-9
Apple	4,613	6.9	4,886	7	-5.6
Acer Group	4,323	6.5	4,610	6.6	-6.2
Others	14,077	21	15,889	22.9	-11.4
Total	67,005	67,005 100	69,510	100	-3.6

And here's IDC's Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Third Quarter 2017 (Preliminary)

	3Q17 Shipments	3Q17 Market Share	3Q16 Shipments	3Q16 Market Share	3Q17/3Q16 Growth
HP Inc	15,295	22.80%	14,427	21.40%	6.00%
Lenovo	14,506	21.60%	14,497	21.50%	0.10%
Dell	10,836	16.10%	10,751	15.90%	0.80%
Apple	4,901	7.30%	4,887	7.20%	0.30%
ASUS	4,189	6.20%	4,907	7.30%	-14.60%
Others	17,457	26.00%	18,029	26.70%	-3.20%
Total	67,185	100.00%	67,498	100.00%	-0.50%

Both firms feel that the long-term PC sales trend won't helped by longer refresh cycles in mature markets. Windows 10 is helping business sales, but upgrades remain patchy as different parts of the world are making the jump to Microsoft's latest at different times depending on the health of the local economy. ®