IDC seconds the Gartner findings as it reports the Q3 2013 EMEA PC shipment totals-- 21.4 million units with a -16% Y-o-Y decline, a lesser decline than the previous quarter thanks to improvements in commercial demand.
Consumer demand remains lukewarm, leading to cautious retail fulfillment and tighter inventory on the vendor side, while back-to-school demand only manages to bolster the educational segment.
The shipment numbers break down as follow-- portable PCs total 13.3m units with a -20.6% decline, desktops hit 8m with -7% decline.
"While it is too early to talk about recovery, the worse seems to have been reached in Q3 2013," IDC says. "However, the ramp-up is mainly in the commercial area, with September performance above expectations for most players. The end of Windows XP support in 2014 is driving IT departments to focus on hardware refresh, generating higher renewal in the corporate space."
W. Europe is in line with analyst forecasts, with shipment decline reaching -13.2% Y-o-Y, an unfavourable comparison as Q3 2012 had support from Windows 8 launch preparations. The disappearance of mini-notebooks contributes to the negative performance of consumer portable PCs, commercial desktops post flat growth (an indication of businesses starting to invest in hardware), and the region starts seeing the first education tenders on Chromebooks.
The Nordics and German-speaking countries perform better than the European average, while S. Europe remains more constrained.
CEE and MEA also see poor performance, with respective declines of -22.2% and -14.5% Y-o-Y. Negatively affecting both regions are changes in consumer spending (from notebooks to tablets), economic recession, unfavourable exchange rates in some countries and political turmoil in others.
On the vendor side, HP retains the top position through solid W. European performance and growth in MEA, as well as increased commercial desktop demand. Lenovo follows with double-digit growth and solid expansion in both consumer and commercial space, while Acer retains 3rd place even if hit by the mini-notebook extinction.
Dell achieves "great results" with market share gain across both desktop and notebook segments, and Acer remains in 5th place despite double-digit shipment declines.