PC Market Finishes 2015 with Expected Shipments Drop
January 13, 2016 | IDCEstimated reading time: 5 minutes
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 71.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015 (4Q15), a year-on-year decline of -10.6%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC ) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker . Although total shipments were in line with already conservative expectations, the news nonetheless ended 2015 as the first year below 300 million units since 2008. The holiday quarter achieved a modest uptick compared to the third quarter, but the year-on-year decline in 2015 shipments was nevertheless the largest in history, surpassing the decline of -9.8% in 2013.
The PC market continued to face persistent challenges from longer-PC lifecycles and competition from mobile phones and tablets, despite the slowing growth in those markets. However, economic issues like falling commodity prices and weak international currencies, as well as social disruptions in EMEA and Asia/Pacific that disrupted foreign markets were a larger factor for 2015. Changes in the OS market also had a significant impact with the end of support for Windows XP and promotions of low-cost PCs driving a surge in replacements in 2014 that combined with the launch of Windows 10 and a free upgrade program to delay new system purchases in 2015. Lastly, while some very attractive new PCs have been launched, the market is taking some time to respond to new OS and hardware configurations – deciding when to upgrade and evaluating slim, convertible, detachable, and touch variations vs. more traditional PCs. Nevertheless, many of these products have received positive reviews and there's potential for a faster commercial transition to Windows 10 in 2016 than we saw for prior versions of Windows."
"The PC market remains competitive and the economic environment weakened further with the recent drop in the Chinese stock market," said Loren Loverde , IDC Vice President, Worldwide PC Tracker. "However, PC replacements should pick up again in 2016, particularly later in the year. Commercial adoption of Windows 10 is expected to accelerate, and consumer buying should also stabilize by the second half of the year. Most PC users have delayed an upgrade, but can only maintain this for so long before facing security and performance issues. We continue to believe that a majority of these users will purchase another PC, motivated by new products and attractive pricing."
"Consumer sentiment toward PCs remains a challenge, though clearly there are pockets of growth," said Jay Chou , Research Manager, IDC Worldwide PC Tracker. "Even as mainstream desktop and notebooks see their lifetimes stretched ever longer, Apple's emergence as a top 5 global PC vendor in 2015 shows that there can be strong demand for innovative, even premium-priced systems that put user experience first."
Detachable tablets, which are counted separately from PCs, are growing quickly but from a small base. Adding those units to PC shipments would boost growth by roughly 6 percentage points in the fourth quarter and 3 percentage points for all of 2015, bringing year-on-year growth for 4Q15 to a decline of about -5% and -7.5% for all of 2015. The impact for 2016 will be larger as detachable tablet volume grows, boosting earlier forecasts of PC growth in 2016 from -3.1% to growth of 1 to 2%.
"The U.S. PC market fell -4.3% year over year to 17.4 million units. Although the U.S. dollar has been strengthening in lieu of currency crises in other regions, consumers here are not immune to economic concerns that have persisted globally," said Linn Huang , Research Director, Devices & Displays. "The free upgrade path to Windows 10 allowed some consumers who might otherwise have shopped for new PCs during the holiday season to obtain a 'new' PC experience. Additionally, the launch of the iPad Pro may have syphoned off some consumer interest in traditional PCs. Consequently, the holiday season produced soft results for the U.S. PC market."
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