Worldwide PC shipments totaled 67.2 million units in the third quarter of 2018, a 0.1 percent increase from the third quarter of 2017, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. The global market has shown modest stability for two consecutive quarters.
EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Japan experienced growth in the third quarter of 2018, while the U.S. and Latin America declined. Latin America showed the steepest decline of 8.5 percent after showing some stabilization earlier in 2018. However, these results are in line with Gartner’s expectations in view of CPU supply constraints for the rest of the year.
“The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades. We expect the Windows 10 upgrade cycle to continue through 2020 at which point the upgrade demand will diminish,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “Despite the third quarter typically showing strong consumer PC sales due to the back-to-school season, weakness in consumer PC demand continued, offsetting the strong sales in the business market.”
“Although the third-quarter results did not show any material impact, the Intel CPU shortage could influence the PC market moving forward with price increases and changes to the vendor landscape. While this shortage will have some short-term impacts, Gartner does not see any lasting impact on overall PC demand. Current expectation is that the shortage will continue into 2019, but Intel will prioritize the high-end CPU as well as the CPUs for business PCs. In the meantime, AMD will pick up the part of the market where Intel cannot supply CPUs.”
Lenovo secured the top spot in the worldwide PC market with growth of 10.7 percent, driven by regained traction in the commercial market and its joint venture with Fujitsu (see Table 1). HP Inc. dropped to the second position, but recorded its fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment growth. HP showed strong desktop shipment growth, which indicated strong demand among corporate buyers.
Table 1
Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q18 (Thousands of Units)
| Company | 3Q18 Shipments | 3Q18 Market Share (%) | 3Q17 Shipments | 3Q17 Market Share (%) | 3Q18-3Q17 Growth (%) |
| Lenovo* | 15,889 | 23.6 | 14,357 | 21.4 | 10.7 |
| HP Inc. | 14,629 | 21.8 | 13,773 | 20.5 | 6.2 |
| Dell | 10,737 | 16.0 | 10,200 | 15.2 | 5.3 |
| Apple | 4,928 | 7.3 | 5,385 | 8.0 | -8.5 |
| Acer Group | 4,074 | 6.1 | 4,322 | 6.4 | -5.7 |
| Asus | 4,013 | 6.0 | 4,774 | 7.1 | -15.9 |
| Others | 12,934 | 19.2 | 14,345 | 21.4 | -9.8 |
| Total | 67,206 | 100.0 | 67,156 | 100.0 | 0.1 |