As tablets and smartphones become more and more advanced (and utilitarian), they seem to be pushing the demand for PCs to the back burner.
The consumer PC market is steadily eroding according to reports from Gartner Inc. and the International Data Corporation (IDC) as global PC shipments continue to decline.
Gartner estimates in its report that in Q4 2015, global PC shipments slid to 75.7 million units, which is a decline of 8.3 percent when compared to Q4 2014. The total shipments for 2015 stood at 288.7 million units, which is a decline of 8 percent when compared to the preceding year.
"The fourth quarter of 2015 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of worldwide PC shipment decline," says Mikako Kitagawa, an analyst at Gartner. "Holiday sales did not boost the overall PC shipments, hinting at changes to consumers' PC purchase behavior."
While the top five PC manufacturers in Q4 2015 were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus and Apple (in that order), the Cupertino company was the only vendor to see worldwide shipment growths. In Q4 2015, Apple shipped 5.7 million units of PCs, accounting for 7.5 percent of the market share and a year-over-year growth of 2.8 percent.
The chart below illustrates the global PC shipments by the top 5 vendors:
The U.S. market also saw a sales drop of 3.1 percent as the PCs sold in Q4 2015 totaled to 16.9 million. This was partly due to lack of demand for PCs by holiday buyers when compared to 2014.
In 2016, Gartner estimates that PC shipments will decline by 1 percent when compared to the previous year. However, there is a possibility that a "soft recovery" may happen towards the end of the year. Kitagawa feels that the PC space is currently undergoing a structural change, which will result in a decline in the PC installed base in the coming years.
Research firm IDC's report also echoes a similar trend for the PC industry. According to the IDC, the worldwide PC shipments in Q4 2015 amounted to 71.9 million units, which is a -10.6 percent year-on-year decline.
This is the first time since 2008 that the figure has stood at less than 300 million units. Buoyed by the holiday buyers, Q4 2015 saw the sales of PCs increase marginally when compared to Q3 2015.
The sales of PCs were impacted due to competition from tablets and mobile phones, as well as longer PC life cycles. Moreover, the economic environment - the drop in commodity prices and weakening international currencies - also influenced the reduced shipments.
"The PC market remains competitive and the economic environment weakened further with the recent drop in the Chinese stock market," opines Loren Loverde, vice president of IDC's Worldwide PC Tracker program.
Loverde, however, is optimistic that the PC sales could pick up in 2016 as several users who have prolonged upgrading to a new device can only do so for a stipulated period. If they do not upgrade, they will be faced with battling performance and security problems. Therefore, Loverde is of the belief that a large chunk of these users will buy a new PC, which are attractively priced and pack in better hardware and software.
Like Kitagawa, Loverde also is of the belief that by end 2016 things should pick up again for the PC industry, especially with the adoption of Windows 10. Interestingly, Windows 10 was blamed for the low PC sales last year because it was given away as a free upgrade.
Interestingly, IDC's estimates for Apple's global PC shipments in Q4 2015 are eerily similar to those from Gartner. The firm estimates that in Q4 2015 Apple shipped 5.7 million PCs to account for 7.9 percent of the market share. IDC too ranks Apple as No. 5 in its list of top PC vendor shipments worldwide in Q4 2015, which also includes Lenovo, HP, Dell and ASUS. Like Gartner's estimates, Apple occupies the third spot in the IDC list for U.S. PC vendors.
What fuels the growth of Apple PCs despite a saturation in the PC market? The fact that it is innovative.
"Even as mainstream desktop and notebooks see their lifetimes stretched ever longer, Apple's emergence as a top five global PC vendor in 2015 shows that there can be strong demand for innovative, even premium-priced systems that put user experience first," elucidates Jay Chou, IDC's research manager for Worldwide PC Tracker.
Photo: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung | Flickr
