According to preliminary data from Gartner Inc., worldwide PC shipments were 68 million units in the third quarter of 2022, a 19.5% decline from the third quarter of 2021. The fourth straight quarter of year-over-year drop marks the market’s worst decline since Gartner started monitoring the PC industry in the middle of the 1990s.
Historic Downturn in Q3 Performance
According to Mikako Kitagawa, Director Analyst at Gartner, the PC market may be seeing a historic downturn as a result of this quarter’s performance. Even though supply chain interruptions have now subsided, huge inventories are now a significant problem due to the sluggish demand for PCs in both the consumer and commercial segments.
Despite extensive discounts and marketing, the back-to-school season sales failed to meet expectations since there was little demand since so many consumers had just bought new PCs two years prior.
Business IT expenditure became more selective due to geopolitical and economic uncertainty, and PCs were not given first priority. In the third quarter of 2022, the top three PC vendors remained unaltered, with Lenovo keeping the top spot in shipments with a 25.2% market share.
Despite a drop in shipments from the previous year, Lenovo increased its market share. Except for Canada, the company’s overall shipments were down, but the EMEA desktop market expanded thanks to the start of production at Lenovo’s first in-house manufacturing plant in Europe, which opened in Hungary in June 2022.
HP had a difficult quarter with a significant drop in worldwide shipments. The desktop market saw an increase from HP in a few locations, but laptop shipments as a whole fell. With the exception of Asia Pacific, all other areas saw desktop market growth as Dell and HP saw their market share gaps close. Except for Japan, however, Dell’s laptop shipments decreased everywhere.
About the Regional Overview
The third quarter of 2022 saw a 17.3% fall in U.S. PC shipments, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipping loss. The entire U.S. market for laptops declined due to slower laptop sales, but the desktop market grew modestly as a result of pent-up demand from corporations and public sector purchases.
The largest worry in the American market is inflation, although smaller businesses are rather optimistic about the macroeconomic environment, according to Kitagawa. Small and medium organizations did not experience as significant a decline in laptop demand as large enterprises did in the third quarter of 2022. Based on shipment data, Dell held the top rank in the U.S. PC market with a 26.8% market share, followed by HP with a 23.2% share.
The third quarter saw a 26.4% year-over-year loss in the EMEA PC market, which fell to 17 million units, the largest decline of any region. Following a boom at the outset of the epidemic, this is the third consecutive down quarter for the EMEA PC market.
According to Kitagawa, several issues, including difficult macroeconomic conditions, diminishing corporate and consumer demand, and large levels of inventory contributed to the considerable decline in the EMEA PC market. In the first two quarters of this year, numerous PC vendors also shut down their operations in Russia, which had a negative influence on overall shipments and is especially evident when comparing year-over-year figures.
With Japan excluded, the Asia Pacific market shrank 16.6% year over year, primarily as a result of slower shipments in China. China had almost completely returned to normal daily life and economic activity by the third quarter of 2021, but lockdowns this year in several locations hindered business operations and reduced demand for PCs in the government, enterprise, and consumer markets.
These findings are provisional. Clients of Gartner’s PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region program will soon get access to final statistics. This tool provides a thorough and current image of the global PC industry, enabling product planning, distribution, marketing, and sales departments to stay current on important topics and their global ramifications.
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