Western Europe’s largest distributors saw a -9% year-on-year fall in PC sales by volume during the first quarter of 2016 according to data published by CONTEXT, the European IT market analysis company, but a move to higher specifications lifted prices, so the impact was muted.
"Q1 2016 was a challenging quarter for PCs in Western European distribution”, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at CONTEXT. “Year-on-year sales were impacted by a strong compare and weak conditions in some of the segments. On a positive note, PC pricing was up compared to last year and there was continued growth in a number of areas, including the new hybrid mobile PCs."
The decline is partly the result of strong performance in the same quarter last year when low-end notebooks based on Microsoft's Windows with the Bing search add-on helped overall PC sales to grow by +14%. The Bing-based share in the notebook segment dropped from 17% in Q1 2015 to 0.4% this year, making notebooks the most significant contributor to the decline in terms of product categories. Notebook volume sales were down by -10% year-on-year, while sales of desktops declined at the smaller rate of -7%.
On a more positive note, the ongoing changes in the PC operating system mix contributed to a rise in distributors' average sell prices (ASPs). Following quarter-on-quarter increases throughout 2015 - driven by declining Bing volumes, growing Windows 10 sales, and industry efforts to bring PC prices up in order to offset the effects of the weakening euro on PC margins - PC ASPs stood at €506 in Q1 2016: up by +8% year-on-year. As a result, PC revenues were down by only -1% during the quarter in spite of the -9% drop in volume sales.
Country split
- Germany -4.9%
- UK -7.3%
- Italy -3.9%
- Spain -10.7%
- France -16.2%
- Netherlands -12.0%
- Poland -12.4%
- Sweden -11.9%
- Switzerland 7.8%