Strong corporate desktop sales limit the decline of the PC market
Gartner and IDC have published their quarterly reports on the size of the PC market in the first quarter of 2019, and they've both agreed: about 58.5 million systems were shipped. The two companies use somewhat different definitions of PCs — for Gartner's desktops, laptops, and ultramobile premiums such as the Surface Pro, but exclude Chromebooks and iPads; for IDC's desktops, laptops, and workstations, including Chromebooks, but don't include any tablets at all — but this quarter has ended up selling almost the same number of units.
The two analysts don however, agree on who was the top seller. IDC puts HP top at 1[ads1]3.6 million systems (0.8 percent fewer than the same quarter a year ago) and 23.2 percent market share, with Lenovo in second place, at 13.4 million systems (up 1.8 percent) and 23.0 percent share of the market. Gartner, in contrast, puts Lenovo top at 13.2 million systems (up 6.9 percent), and 22.5 percent share, and HP in second, with 12.8 million systems (up 0.8 percent) and 21.9 percent share.
Both companies put Dell in third place, with around 10 million systems shipped, and Apple in fourth place, with 4 million systems sold. Gartner then puts Asus fifth, just behind Apple, shipping 3.6 million systems. IDC instead gives the node to Acer, again at 3.6 million machines sold. Fifty place, with sales of 0.45 million Surfaces for the quarter. That situation leaves Intel's 14nm manufacturing facilities overburdened. Gartner analysts said that these companies have broken the growth seen in the second quarter last year, as the delays prompted by Intel to focus on higher margin products, with PC vendors following suit. IDC similarly cited the shortage of Intel chips at the low end as partly to blame for the market decline. To the extent that low-end chips were available, the PC companies seemed to be putting them in Chromebooks rather than Windows machines.
Countering this effect was stronger than expected commercial desktop sales, as companies continue their Windows 10 refresh cycle. However, Gartner's analysts feel that this may have peaked. Going forward, greater adoption of AMD's processors is expected to reduce the impact of supply constraints.
