No surprise: PC market suffers 5th straight year of decline
Considering that it was 365 million units in 2011, the market has actually contracted a quarter in the last five years.
Lenovo is the number one PC vendor (shipment-wise) again.
According to a report by Gartner, PC shipments in 2016 totaled 269.7 million units, a 6.2% decline from 2015. A downward trend that began since 2012, this is the fifth straight year the PC market has contracted.
To put another way, if you were to consider that PC shipments amounted to 365 million units in 2011, shipments have actually dropped 26% in just the last five years. That’s…a lot.
And it’s not just Gartner that says so; IDC agrees too. The latter pegs “worldwide traditional PC shipments” in 2016 to be 260 million units.
(Source: Gartner.)
(Source: IDC.)
For what it’s worth, the top five PC vendors for 2016 (in which both research companies agree) are: Lenovo, HP, Dell, ASUS, and Apple. Lenovo and HP are pretty much neck and neck with each other; in fact, the combination of both already takes 40% of the shipment pie.
Neither Gartner nor IDC offers any prediction for 2017, but if I were betting man, I’d put my two cents that the PC market will continue to shrink in the foreseeable future.
Is the PC dying? I don’t know, but it’s clearly sick right now.
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