‘PC market shrank in the past quarter due to lower demand and CPU shortages’

PC manufacturers shipped a total of 68.6 million desktops and laptops in the past three months, according to Gartner, a 4.3 percent decrease from the same period last year. According to the agency, this is related to CPU shortages and less consumer demand.

Research firm Gartner reports that for the whole of 2018 there were 259.4 million PCs delivered, which is a decrease of 1.3 percent compared to 2017. In the second and third quarters of 2018 there was growth, but the number of PCs delivered decreased in the last quarter of last year. In the emea region, which includes Western Europe, there was also a decline. This amounted to 3.8 percent, which is equivalent to 20.9 million PCs delivered in the past quarter.

Since 2012, annual PC deliveries have declined, although the decline was less pronounced in 2018 than in the previous three years. According to Gartner, that flattening decline is mainly related to business deliveries, where upgrades to Windows 10 led to more new PCs. That compensated somewhat for the slump in consumer demand. Consumer PCs accounted for 40 percent of total deliveries in 2018, up from 49 percent in 2014.

Gartner reports that there were signs of optimism in 2018, but the industry faced two negative factors. This primarily concerns a shortage of CPUs, which, according to Gartner, caused problems in the production chains of manufacturers. As a result, demand could not always be met. In addition, political and economic uncertainties in several countries negatively impacted the demand for PCs. It also appears that consumers no longer make substantial purchases during the holiday period in December, which used to be a period in which consumer demand increased significantly.

In the fourth quarter, Lenovo, HP and Dell accounted for 63 percent of all shipments. Lenovo far surpassed HP in the fourth quarter of 2018 as the manufacturer that supplied the most PCs. This increase is partly due to the joint venture with Fujitsu’s PC division, which started in March last year.

Gartner’s competitor, IDC, also released figures for the last quarter of 2018. IDC calculated that a total of 68.1 million units were shipped, a decrease of 3.7 percent compared to the last quarter of 2017.

Gartner figures