Worldwide PC shipments fell by 2.4 percent year-on-year to around 80.8 million units in the fourth quarter, according to data from IDC. Although the drop in sales is less than IDC’s projected decline of 4.8 percent for the quarter, it still marks the end of a difficult 2014 for the PC market, the third consecutive year with overall volumes sliding. On an annual basis, 2014 shipments totaled 308.6 million units, down 2.1 percent from the prior year. The decline was partly offset by the growth of low-priced systems such as Google’s Chromebooks and Microsoft’s promotion of Windows 8 + Bing. However, the report cautioned that weakening drivers such as Bing promotions and the end of XP support transitions cast doubt on the strength of the market going into 2015.
The top three vendors – Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer and Apple – continued to show solid year-on-year growth. Lenovo’s PC sales rose 4.9 percent to 16 million units (19.9% market share), HP increased an impressive 15.1 percent to 15.9 million (19.7% share), helped by a particularly strong quarter in the US, and Dell was up 8.5 percent to 10.9 million (13.5% share). Acer remained in fourth position with 6.2 million units sold (7.7 percent market share), having grown 3 percent year-on-year above all due to the success of its Chromebooks and entry-level notebooks, while Apple maintained its lead over Asus with 5.8 million units sold thanks to recent price cuts and improved demand in mature markets.
On a geographic basis, the US PC market continued to grow in the fourth quarter, outperforming the global market for the tenth consecutive quarter. However, overall growth in mature regions such as the US and Europe slowed from earlier in the year. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) saw a very slight increase in volume as a number of public projects and improving consumer demand helped stabilise the market following several years of significant declines, In Japan volume fell by 35 percent to under 3 million, the country’s lowest quarter by shipments since 2006. PC shipments in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) posted a slight increase in the fourth quarter, fuelled mainly by strong consumer demand during the holiday season, said IDC.
