PC Sales Drop to Historic Lows

Adding those units to PC shipments would boost growth by roughly 6% points in the fourth quarter and 3% points for all of 2015, bringing year-on-year growth for 4Q15 to a decline of about -5% and -7.5% for all of 2015.

But the biggest takeaway from the IDC report, by my reckoning, is the idea that laptops with detachable tablet portions – like the Microsoft Surface Book – might actually be in place to stall out the shrinking PC market, which it predicts will shrink another 3.1% next year.

HP Inc., the No. 2 global PC maker, increased its market share slightly to nearly 19 percent.

Consumers should also be motivated to upgrade to new PCs for security and performance improvements, according to IDC. PC shipments fell by 10.4 percent in 2015 compared to 2014, the firm said.

“The fourth quarter of 2015 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of worldwide PC shipment decline”, Gartner Principal Analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement.

ASUS outperformed the market and moved into the number 4 position with almost 6 million units and 7.9 percent market share – boosted by strong sales in Asia Pacific.

Buffeted by consumer infatuation with tablets and phones, worldwide shipments of PCs continued spiraling lower in the final three months of 2015, according to research firms IDC and Gartner.

PC shipments otherwise declined due to fewer upgrades than expected. “The U.S. PC market fell -4.3% year over year to 17.4 million units”. HP, Dell, and manufacturers in the “Other” group that comprises non top-5 vendors, all saw a decline in shipments. While the figure is in line with previous expectations, IDC says the decline is the largest in history, surpassing the decline of -9.8% in 2013. Third-placed Dell shipped 10.17 million units, declining by 5.7 percent.

“The PC market remains competitive and the economic environment weakened further with the recent drop in the Chinese stock market”, said Loren Loverde, IDC Vice President, Worldwide PC Tracker.

For U.S. shipments, IDC estimates Apple shipped 2.2 million machines for a 12.7 percent share of the market. The top five vendors in IDC’s results were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, and Apple.

Shipments have declined every year since a peak of more than 360 million in 2011 as more consumers turn to smartphones and tablets when they want to post on Twitter, send an e-mail or write a document.Gartner forecasts a fall of 1 percent in 2016 with the potential of a soft recovery later in the year.