AsiaPac PC shipments down 1.5% in Q4 2015: Gartner

By Digital News Asia January 15, 2016

Worldwide PC shipments fell 8.3% to 75.7 million units
Top 3 vendors are Lenovo, HP and Dell, in order

AsiaPac PC shipments down 1.5% in Q4 2015: Gartner SHIPMENTS for the Asia Pacific personal computer (PC) market reached 26 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 1.5% decline from the fourth quarter of 2014.

Similarly, worldwide PC shipments totaled 75.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, an 8.3% decline from the fourth quarter of 2014, according to preliminary results by Gartner Inc.

For the year, 2015 PC shipments totalled 288.7 million units, an 8% decline from 2014, the analyst and research firm said in a statement.

“The fourth quarter of 2015 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of worldwide PC shipment decline,” said Mikako Kitagawa (pic), principal analyst at Gartner.

“Holiday sales did not boost the overall PC shipments, hinting at changes to consumers’ PC purchase behaviour.

“On the business side, Windows 10 generally received positive reviews, but as expected, Windows 10 migration was minor in the fourth quarter as many organisations were just starting their testing period,” she added.

All regions registered a decrease in shipments, according to Gartner. Currency devaluation issues continued to impact EMEA (Europe/ Middel East/ Africa), Latin America and Japan.

“Collectively EMEA, Japan and Latin America saw their markets reduced by nearly 10% in 2015,” said Kitagawa.

Gartner’s outlook for PC shipments in 2016 is for a decline of 1% compared with 2015, with the potential for a soft recovery in late 2016.

Kitagawa said the PC market is still in the middle of structural change which will reduce the PC installed base in the next few years.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Lenovo registered a worldwide PC shipment decline for the third consecutive quarter.

However, Lenovo declined less than the industry average, and it extended its lead in the market. It accounted for 20.3% of worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2015 (see Table 1 below).

Lenovo did particularly well in North America to offset shipment declines in EMEA, Latin America and Japan.

HP’s fourth quarter PC shipments declined in the worldwide market and across all regions. The decline in the regions were mostly the same or better than the regional average except for the US market.

The steep decline in the US market was in part because of unusually high shipment volume in the fourth quarter of 2014, led by low-priced Bing notebooks targeting holiday sales.

Dell’s PC shipments declined across all regions except Japan where the company grew by single digits compared to the fourth quarter of 2014. Although Dell’s shipments declined in EMEA and the United States, Dell declined less than the regional averages.

Asia Pacific decline

The Asia Pacific PC market reached 26 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 1.5% decline from the fourth quarter of 2014, Gartner said.

Buyers did not rush to replace with newer PC models with Windows 10. PC vendors looked for profitability over shipment volume, focusing on segments such as gaming PCs; bundling of desktops with large monitor screens and ultramobile device models.

Preliminary results indicate that the China PC market declined 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with a year ago.

For the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, which started in 2012 with the launch of tablets.

“In 2015, local currency devaluation also played a key role in the market conditions,” Kitagawa said.

“EMEA, Latin America and Japan faced a major impact from the devaluation, showing double-digit declines in 2015. In contrast, the United States and Asia Pacific experienced minor declines of almost flat to low single-digit declines as the currency issue did not affect these regions,” she said.

The top six vendor accounted for more of the overall PC market in 2015. These vendors accounted for 73.1% of shipments in 2015, up from 70.4% of shipments in 2014 (see Table 2 below).

Lenovo maintained the No 1 position, accounting for 19.8% of PC shipments, followed by HP with 18.2% market share. Dell rounded out the top three vendors, accounting for 13.6% of shipments.