Commercial Segment Provides a Bright Spot in the Traditional PC Market

The worldwide market for traditional PCs, inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 3.0% year over year in the 1Q19, according to preliminary results from IDC. Global shipments were above expectations, reaching 58.5 million during the quarter.

Although the shortage of Intel processors, mostly at the lower end, remained a factor in seeing a contraction in 1Q19, the market performed better than expected with most regions exceeding forecast. Stronger than expected desktop shipments further boosted volume, coming on the heels of a tough previous quarter. Furthermore, more PC brands turned to AMD chips. All of this, combined with firms rounding the last corner on its Windows 10 migration deployments, led to a shift in the market for traditional PCs towards more commercial and premium products.

"Desktop PCs were surprisingly resilient as the commercial segment helped drive a refresh during the quarter," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers. "Capitalizing on this refresh cycle, the top vendors - HP, Lenovo, and Dell - each increased their year-over-year volume and captured additional share in the desktop PC market.

Despite a year-over-year decline of 0.8%, HP managed to regain the top position with 13.6 million traditional PCs shipped during the quarter. Lenovo slipped into second place after two quarters in the top position. However, on a global basis the company has maintained a consistent growth trajectory over the course of the past year.

Dell was in third place and managed to experience the strongest growth during the quarter. Apple saw a slight decline with 4.1 million units shipped. Acer rounded out the top 5 with 6.1% market share during the quarter.