PC Market Plunges Again

It seems as if the PC Market finally had started to stabilize in 2014, but the most recent data released does not look that good.

Global shipments of PCs during the 2015 first quarter fell by 5.2% from the same period one year ago. The total shipped dropped to 71.7 million units during the first three months of 2015 from 75.7 million in 2014, according to data from Gartner the online research firm.

At the same time, another online research firm, IDC, said the decline this year was even larger with data released on Friday. According to the data, global shipments of PCs were just 68.5 million, which was a falloff of more than 6.7% over the same period last year.

Fewer consumers have been purchasing PCs. In 2014, it seemed that the PC market had started stabilizing, as the global shipments fell just 2% last year in comparison to 2013 after the 2013 figures had fallen by 10% compared to those in 2012.

However, much of the increase in 2014 had been driven by people upgrading older PCs that were powered by the operating system Windows XP which Microsoft in 2014 stopped supporting.

A bit of positive news was that Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo each experienced an increase in their PC shipments, but were the only two companies to do so.

Lenovo had the most shipments with an increase of 5.7% during the first three months of 2015, from 12.8 million the first three months of 2014 to 13.5 million for the same three-month period.

Lenovo owns the majority of the PC shipments at 18.8% compared to 17.3% for HP during the first three months of 2015.

There are signs not all is lost. The PC market might get a big bump once Windows 10 is fully launched Microsoft later this year. In addition, there are also signs of solid growth in the hybrid market that combines a tablet with a laptop. Hybrid computers were the leaders in growth from the PC shipments.

This decline in PC sales has also hit Intel the giant in chip making. The company’s processing chips are used to power up the majority of PCs.