Report: PC Shipments See Worst Drop in Q1; HP Remains Top Vendor

Research firm IDC has released its first quarter PC shipment estimates for this year and it registered a sharp decline of 13.9 per cent from the same period in 2012. This is the steepest year-over-year decline since IDC began tracking the PC market's quarterly performance in 1994.

This decline is worse than the firm's estimate of 7.7 per cent; and in spite of some mild improvement in the economic environment and some new PC models offering Windows 8, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago. Mr. Bob O'Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays was reported as saying the launch of Windows 8 failed to give the PC market a much needed boost, and instead, its radical approach to desktop computing, coupled with the extra costs of touch-enabled displays, appeared to have put off consumers from buying PCs.

In spite of the declining market for PCs, Hewlett-Packard managed to maintain its position as the top vendor in the global market, according to IDC's data. HP captured a 15.7 per cent share of the global PC market, by shipping approximately 12 million units in the first quarter of 2013, though that represented a 23.7 per cent decline from its shipments in the same quarter of 2012.

Lenovo is the runner-up as it managed to ship 11.7 million units in the first quarter, and with that figure that marked little change against the company's performance in the first quarter of 2012; however given the declining shipment  numbers of the other companies on IDC's top five list, the mainland Chinese company seems to be doing well. For more information from the IDC report, do head over to the research firm's site.

(Source: IDC via Forbes)

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