Gartner: Not a very merry Christmas for PC market as chip shortage bites, small biz vanishes

If you're not Lenovo, HP or Dell it has been a year of shrinkage

Global PC shipments slumped 4.3 per cent in the final quarter of the year as computer manufacturers had a very unhappy festive season.

According to Gartner numbers published today, vendors suffered a year-long decline of 1.3 per cent in shipments to 259.4 million units, and in the final quarter, shipments of 68.6 million units were down 4.3 per cent in what is supposed to be the busiest time of the year for sales.

The big hit, apparently, came from a shortage of processor chips, Gartner senior principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said. As a result of those supply chain issues: “After two quarters of growth in 2Q18 and 3Q18, PC shipments declined in the fourth quarter.”

Demand could, Kitagawa said, be pushed forward into 2019 “if CPU availability improves.”

American PC shipments fared worse than the global market, shedding 4.5 per cent year-on-year in Q4 to 14.2 million units. Kitagawa put this down to two factors: economic uncertainty among small to medium businesses and weak holiday purchases.

“Holiday sales are no longer a major factor driving consumer demand for PCs,” she said, and the traditional end-of-year SMB refresh didn't happen. “Our early indicator showed that SOHO and small business buyers held off on some new PC purchases due to uncertainties around the political and economic conditions.”

Globally, ASUS, Apple, and Acer suffered the greatest declines, as the table below shows, but the only two vendors to manage year-on-year growth were Dell and Lenovo (the latter knocked HP Inc off the number-one spot in Q4 2018).

Company	Q4 2018 units (mn)	Q4 2018 market share (%)	Q4 2017 units (mn)	Q4 2017 market share (%)	Year-on-year growth
Lenovo	16.628	24.2	15.697	21.9	5.9
HP Inc	15.380	22.4	16.092	22.4	-4.4
Dell	10.915	15.9	10.763	15.0	1.4
Apple	4.920	7.2	5.112	7.1	-3.8
ASUS	4.211	6.1	4.716	6.6	-10.7
Acer	3.861	5.6	4.726	6.6	-18.3
Others	12.710	18.5	14.590	20.3	-12.9
Total	68.626	100	71.696	100	-4.3

For the full year, Dell, Lenovo and HP Inc were able to add unit sales, while Apple, Acer, and ASUS all fell.

Company	FY 2018 units (mn)	FY 2018 market share (%)	FY 2017 units (mn)	FY 2017 market share (%)	Year-on-year growth
Lenovo	58.467	22.5	54.669	20.8	6.9
HP Inc	56.332	21.7	55.179	21.0	2.1
Dell	41.911	16.2	39.793	21.0	5.3
Apple	18.016	6.9	18.963	7.2	-5.0
Acer	15.729	6.1	17.087	6.5	-7.9
ASUS	15.537	6.0	17.952	6.8	-13.5
Others	53.393	20.6	59.034	22.5	-9.6
Total	259.385	100	262.676	100	-1.3

Any recovery in the USA is probably also contingent on how long the federal government's tap is turned off in the Trump-Congress standoff. ®

Meanwhile...

Analyst house IDC has its own numbers on PC shipments, again blaming inventory issues and processor supply shortages for shrinking figures. It reckons units fell 3.7 per cent in Q4 2018 versus the year-ago quarter, and were pretty much flat for the full year.