Gartner Says Declining Worldwide PC Shipments In Fourth Quarter Of 2012 Signal Structural Shift Of PC Market

In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 17.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 2.1 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2011 (see Table 2). Due to the tight inventory control and preparation for the Windows 8 launch, most PC vendors were able to ship Windows 8 PCs to the retail space. However, PC sell-through was rather weak which leaves some level of inventory concerns for vendors in the consumer market.

“Consumer’s holiday spending went into other products and services, and U.S. holiday sales became less important for PC sales. For professionals, the fourth quarter is typically a good sales season because of last minutes PC purchases before the tax year-end. Our early research indicates that there was good growth in professional PC sales,” Ms. Kitagawa said.

Table 2
Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q12 (Units)
Company		4Q12 Shipments		4Q12 Market Share (%)		4Q11 Shipments		4Q11 Market Share (%)		4Q12-4Q11 Growth (%)
HP		4,657,123		26.6		4,137,788		23.1		12.6
Dell		3,355,152		19.2		4,020,549		22.5		-16.5
Apple		2,145,082		12.3		2,035,082		11.4		5.4
Lenovo		1,476,606		8.4		1,345,975		7.5		9.7
Acer Group		1,377,824		7.9		1,756,838		9.8		-21.6
Others		4,493,820		25.7		5,637,726		25.6		-2.0
Total		17,505,607		100.0		17,881,424		100.0		-2.1
Note: Data includes desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad.Data is based on the shipments selling into channels.
Source: Gartner (January 2013)

PC shipments in EMEA totaled 28.1 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a 9.6 percent decrease from the fourth quarter of 2011 (see Table 3). Western Europe remained the weak point across EMEA, as Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa saw growth quarter-on-quarter.

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