IDC: Slight Growth in the EMEA PC Market

The Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) traditional PC market (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) recorded slight growth in the fourth quarter of 2017, with the market going positive (+1.2%) and totaling 20.9 million units, according to IDC.

The commercial space grew 3.9% due to enterprise renewals and a strategic focus on mobility and security, while holiday season promotions and gaming increased volume in the consumer segment. Notebooks performed positively across EMEA (+2.1%) with very strong growth in MEA (+12.1%), continued growth in CEE (+1.8%), and stabilizing to flat in Western Europe. Once again, desktops have strengthened in EMEA and show positive signs toward stabilization (-0.8%) due to increased commercial demand across all regions.

In Western Europe, the overall traditional PC market contracted (-1.5% YoY). Notebooks were weaker than in previous quarters, but managed to remain flat YoY. Although remaining negative, desktops showed some strength and decreased just 5.1% YoY. Southern Europe showed the strongest signs of growth, with France and Iberia growing at 4.1% and 1.8% respectively. The U.K. remained negative, but performed slightly above expectations with a 4.0% decrease. Volume in Benelux decreased slightly (-0.6%) due to a weaker performance in Belgium, while the Netherlands posted 4.7% growth. The Nordics declined 3.6%, with Sweden decreasing 11.2%, while DACH also performed negatively, with Germany declining in volume by 2.0%.

The consumer PC market declined by 3.7%, although vendors' increased strategic focus on gaming is driving resilience in the segment. In addition, seasonal promotions helped boost volumes for consumers. The commercial space increased by 0.6%, driven by continuous demand for more premium, ultramobile thin and light devices, as well as a greater focus on the security benefits brought about by renewing older hardware to newer, more secure models.

"In 2017Q4 the PC market in the CEE region performed in line with the forecast, an increase of 4.0% YoY," said Nikolina Jurisic, product manager, IDC CEMA. "The desktop market was above expectations with growth of 8.1% YoY, benefiting from renewals in the public, corporate, and SMB sectors. Notebooks, on the other hand, only reported overall growth of 1.8%, also driven by the commercial sector, while the consumer space reported a slight decline of 0.5% due to some build-up in inventory in the key markets. A few smaller CEE markets increased in consumer notebooks thanks to the push of entry-level products for the holiday season and the low base in 2016Q4.

Traditional PC market consolidation has slowed but continues to progress, and the top 3 vendors' share continued to grow in 2017Q4. The top 3 players accounted for 61.3% of total market volume, compared with 60.2% in 2016Q3 are HP, Lenovo and Dell ASUS and Apple were fourth with 8.2% market share. ASUS had another tough quarter, except in CEMA where it maintained its position in the notebook space. Apple had a good holiday season with 0.2% YoY growth in market share. Acer Group closed the top ranking, with a share of 7.8%, driven down by WE and MEA. CEE emerged as a relatively stronger subregion, however, with the vendor declining at a much softer rate.

Top 5 Companies EMEA Traditional PC Shipments 17Q4