Better than predicted for EMEA, boosted by notebooks Worldwide PC shipments totalled nearly 68 million units in the third quarter of 2016, a year-on-year decline of 3.9%, says the IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. Shipment volume continued to decline, but the results were about 3.2% ahead of projections. The better than expected results reflect competition among the market leaders and an effort to capitalise on market consolidation and future stabilisation. After struggling to reduce inventory over the past year or more, PC suppliers are now rebuilding inventory for the second half of the year.
Combine this with an improving outlook, a race for market leadership between Lenovo and HP, and efforts to guarantee component supplies, and market drivers are taking shape. The seasonal increase in volume during the second half of the year and projected stronger demand going forward provide some justification for more aggressive positioning.
In addition, the largest vendors have consistently gained share and can exert a growing advantage over smaller players by dominating component supply and shelf space. The top 3 PC vendors took just over 58% of the worldwide market in the third quarter, up from 55% a year ago and 51% in 2014. Nevertheless, total PC shipments are still declining and some of the short-term improvement may come out of next year rather than accelerating longer-term buying.
EMEA PC shipments were stronger than forecast thanks to healthy notebook sales, while desktop sales were very much in line with the forecast. The build-up of expectations towards the year-end business (e.g. mobility adoption) and holiday season promotions like Black Friday, combined with the anticipation of price increases related to some components, pushed the volumes up in the region for notebooks.
"Although we've now seen two consecutive quarters of strong market growth, we believe the strong market performance has less to do with strengthening demand and more to do with increased appetite from the channel for inventory," says Linn Huang, IDC research director, Devices & Displays.
Mature regions continued to perform best, with the US taking the lead with a second consecutive quarter of positive growth. In other developed markets growth was stable or improved slightly with near flat growth in Japan and Canada, followed by a small decline in EMEA.
"We are very pleased to see some improvement in the market," said Loren Loverde, vice president, Worldwide PC Trackers & Forecasting. "Industry efforts to update products to leverage new processors and operating systems, to deliver a better computing experience encompassing more mobile, secure, and faster systems, and to accelerate PC replacements have been critical. These improvements are accumulating, and set the stage for a stronger market going forward."