The EMEA traditional PC market has some good news for Q2 2019-- shipments return to growth after 2 consecutive quarters of Y-o-Y declines, thanks to strong demand for PC refresh from the commercial segment.
Said refresh demand comes ahead of the January 2020 Windows 7 end of service (EOS) date. Thus, despite ongoing shift towards mobile computing solutions, strong desktop performance supported the overall results for the quarter. Further boosting Q2 2019 is the fulfillment of order backlogs brought about by the Intel CPU shortage from earlier in 2019.
The PC market also sees growth on a global perspective, as Q2 2019 shipments total 64.9 million units, a "notably higher than expected" 4.7% Y-o-Y increase brought about by a combination of supply shortage easing and looming trade tensions.
"Supply for Intel's processors improved markedly during the quarter, allowing most PC vendors to fulfill old orders while also shipping a healthy supply of new PCs into the channels," IDC says. "Additionally, the threat of increased tariffs led some PC makers to ship a surplus of desktops and notebooks, thereby artificially propping up the PC market during the Q2 2019."
Moving on to the vendor rankings, Lenovo takes top position with 25% of the Q2 2019 market and shipments reaching 16.2. Helping drive Lenovo shipments for the quarter are some big commercial bids, as well as the fear of additional tariffs. HP follows with 3.2% Y-o-Y growth, as it sees positive results in EMEA as well as the US and Japan.
Third placing Dell sees 3.1% Y-o-Y growth, and manages to increase share in the desktop market by 1 percentage point. Acer is one of the few companies to decline in Q2 2019, despite shipping additional units ahead of potential tariffs. Finally in fifth place is Apple, with shipments reaching 4.1m as the company moves additional units to fend off potential tariffs. Recent MacBook launches also leave the company with plenty of on-hand inventory.
Go IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker July 2019
