Year-on-year volume sales of Notebooks, Desktops and PC workstations through Western European distribution increased by 9.5% in January 2015, following growth of 20.1% in Q4 2014, according to data published by CONTEXT, the European IT market tracking company. Average PC prices across distribution are expected to increase as a result of the recent Euro/US dollar exchange-rate pressures and, moving further into 2015, a smaller contribution from sales of low-cost products as the end of the current Bing initiative has an effect on Channel sales.
Sales of consumer-targeted PCs were up by 12.4% in early 2015 following a 24.1% rise in the last quarter of 2014. While growth has slowed with the end of the holiday period, Channel sales in the segment have continued to benefit from the Q4 2014 sell-in push of low-cost consumer Notebooks, partly driven by systems based on Microsoft's Windows with Bing. Sales were also up year-on-year for consumer Desktops and new types of mobile device, although growth for the latter came from a small base. Geographically, Southern Europe recovered strongly, but there was a set-back in Germany where sales fell 10%.
Context says: "The decline in Germany is based on a positive performance a year ago, while many of the countries posting stronger growth in January 2015 (including Spain and Italy) posted a decline in January 2014. In the Desktop segment for instance, Germany benefited very early on in 2014 from business growth due to XP migration demand and has now seen this go down significantly, while countries such as Spain and Italy still saw Desktop sales pushed by XP migration demand in Q4 and in January. The Southern European countries have also seen their business Notebook growth pushed in Q414 and January 2015 by vendors leveraging Bing in the business space, which hasn't been the case to the same extent in Germany."
The trend for business Desktops in Austria has been similar to Germany, but slowing Desktop growth in January 2015 in Austria was more than offset by strong Notebook growth, the researcher says.
Context says it is seeing increasing vendor consolidation in Western European distribution. The top five PC players (HP, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Apple) made up nearly 80% of sales through distribution in Q413 and just over 85% in Q414. "Samsung and Sony going out of the market plays a role here, but we've also seen a very strong push by Lenovo in terms of actual PC volume sales (+65.5% Y/Y in Q414 in WE distribution, and continuously moving closer to No 1 vendor HP in terms of share). Amongst the top five, while all of them posted Y/Y PC unit growth in Q4, only Lenovo, Acer and Apple managed to outgrow the market and gain share Y/Y."
Volume sales of business-targeted PCs increased by 6.5% in January following an increase of 15.1% in Q4 2014.The slowdown in growth was predominantly due to a 14.3% fall in desktop sales in January as the effect of XP migration demand on sales continued to decline. Business-targeted Notebooks maintained their strong Q4 2014 performance and sales were up by 23.8% year-on-year. However, like in the consumer segment, growth in business Notebooks was predominantly driven by lower-priced units.
"The strong Q4 sell-in of budget notebooks and Bing laptops not only benefited consumer sales in the channel in January but also helped to push volume growth in the business segment”, said Marie-Christine, senior analyst at CONTEXT. “Nearly 16% of business-targeted Notebooks going through distribution in January were based on Bing."
Channel sell-through of Notebooks over the next few months is expected to continue to benefit from last year’s Q3 and Q4 sell-in push of budget systems. Average PC prices across distribution are also expected to increase as a result of the recent Euro/US dollar exchange-rate pressures and, moving further into 2015, a smaller contribution from sales of low-cost products as the end of the current Bing initiative has an effect on Channel sales.
PC (Desktops, Notebooks, PC Workstations) year-on-year growth in January 2015:
UK 19.1%
Germany -10.8%
Italy 15.4%
Spain 19.3%
France 4.5%
Sweden 6.1%
Switzerland -5.6%
Belgium 17.4%
Austria 29.1%