International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research firm, released their latest PC shipment figures for the first quarter of 2015, showing a sharp year-on-year decline of 6.7 percent with the worldwide PC shipments totaling 68.5 million units — the lowest volume recorded since Q1 2009.
Most regions saw a decline in PC shipments with the United States being a little better than the rest of the world with the shipments totaling 14.2 million PCs in the first quarter of 2015. Desktop shipments were a little disappointing, but the budget-friendly offerings like Chromebooks, Windows with Bing, etc. picked up their pace in the region to offset the overall decline.
“Despite the decline, PC shipment in the United States declined at a slower rate than all other regions in first quarter, outperforming worldwide trends for the eleventh consecutive quarter. The strength from key vendors, adoption of emerging products, improvements in the consumer market and in the broader economy are all positive signals,” said Rajani Singh, Senior Research Analyst, Personal Computing.
As far as the vendors and manufacturers are concerned, Lenovo continues to lead with 13.4 million units shipped and grew by 3.4 percent despite the falling worldwide shipments. The Chinese company is expanding to markets outside Asia and it seems it’s receiving a good response. HP is on the second spot with 13 million shipments followed by Dell, Acer and Asus to be the remaining three in the top five manufacturers list.
Lenovo is the market leader worldwide, but if you talk about the United States, things are a little different there as HP and Dell have captured the top two spots in one of the biggest PC markets.
There’s hope that things may change when Microsoft officially releases Windows 10 for customers later this year, offering users several new features and a unified experience. The new operating system will be available as free upgrade for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users so it can have a positive impact on the usage of the operating system. IDC’s Rajani Singh further says,
“The upcoming launch of Windows 10 will consolidate the best of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. In addition to the free upgrade for consumers for a year after the release, Windows 10 should be a net positive as there is pent-up demand for replacements of older PCs. Only part of the installed base needs to replace systems to keep the overall growth rate above zero for rest of the year.”
