Australian Traditional PC Market Grows by 3.3% YoY Defying Global Market Downtrend in 2017

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Traditional PC shipments in Australia (including Desktop, Notebook and Workstation) totalled 981K units in the second quarter of 2017, posting a year-over-year (YoY) growth of 3.3% based on the latest IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Devices Tracker. The market posted yet another quarter of growth in 2017, defying global negative PC trend.

The overall market was driven by the end of financial year (EOFY) sale across segments. The consumer segment posted a growth of 8.6% YoY. “The retail channel was negatively impacted by Dick Smith’s exit last year. This year however, promotional events such as Modern PC program run by Harvey Norman spiked growth in the consumer space. AMD’s new Ryzen series launch and EOFY sales further fuelled growth in this segment,” says Sagar Raghavendra, Client Devices Analyst for IDC Australia.

On the other hand, the commercial segment posted a marginal decline of 0.5% YoY, driven by 9.9% YoY drop in Education, and 12.2% YoY decline in the SMB market. Public sector was a strong contributor to this cycle's success, recording a 24.7% YoY growth, aided by large federal government deployments, while Enterprise sector grew by 8.3% YoY, due to several notebook refresh cycles.

The Notebook PC market grew by 5.2% YoY. “The market continues to shift away from traditional notebook to new form factors such as convertible, which grew by 64% YoY,” noted Raghavendra. “This shift has also resulted in the market moving away from lower price-band to higher price-band category”. The desktop PC declined by 0.5% YoY. “Gaming segment appears to be a beacon of hope for desktop form factor, as this segment grew by 2.4% YoY,” added Raghavendra. “With new processor launch lined up, this segment is set to grow steadily.”

HP, Dell and Lenovo held the top three positions, with 27.7%, 18.4% and 16.7% share respectively, followed by Apple and Acer group with 13.2% and 9.8% respectively. Lenovo gained 2.8% share in comparison to previous year where it faced shipment issues. Dell’s strong performance in public sector enabled it to gain 1.9% share from previous year. HP retained the top position, although it lost 0.6% share compared to previous year, while Apple remained flat.

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