PC Shipments Grow In Second Consecutive Quarter: IDC

(RTTNews) - Worldwide PC shipments increased slightly in the third quarter of 2019 from a year ago, and recorded a second consecutive quarter of growth, according to data from research firm International Data Corporation or IDC.

The growth in the third quarter was, however, hurt by supply constraints and trade tensions between the U.S. and China.

According to preliminary results from IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, traditional PC shipments increased 3 percent in the third quarter to 70.4 million units from 68.4 million units a year ago. Traditional PCs are comprised of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, but do not include tablets or x86 Servers.

"With higher tariffs on the horizon PC makers once again began to push additional inventory during the quarter though the process was a bit more difficult as many faced supply constraints from Intel, leaving AMD with more room to grow. The trade tensions are also leading to changes in the supply chain...," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers.

Linn Huang, research vice president of Devices & Displays, said that commercial demand is expected to accelerate as enterprises work through the remainder of their Windows 10 migration, with the end of service or EOS date for Windows 7 in January 2020 drawing near.

Lenovo topped the list of vendors for the second consecutive quarter, with the company's PC shipments rising 7.1 percent year-ago period to 17.3 million units.

HP Inc. was a close second with 16.8 million units shipped during the quarter, up 9.3 percent from a year ago. It recorded the fastest year-over-year growth among the top five companies.

Dell Technologies ranked third, having shipped 12.1 million units in the quarter with 5.3 percent growth over the previous year. All the top three vendors recorded year-over-year growth.

Apple took the fourth position, but its PC shipments declined 6.1 percent from last year to 5.0 million units. The tech giant continued to struggle to maintain positive momentum on a year-over-year basis due to supply constraints.

Acer Group stood in the fifth spot, but also recorded the strongest decline among the top five vendors. The company's PC shipments decreased 7.2 percent from last year to 4.4 million units.

Despite being among the stronger players in the gaming and Chromebook segments, Acer was negatively impacted by the shortage of Intel processors, IDC noted.