PC Market Finishes 2015 with Expected Shipments Drop

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

United States – HP retained its lead in the U.S. PC market with a 28.1% share, while Dell held the second position with a 23.9% share. Apple, which continues to buck the trend of an eroding consumer PC market, leveraged the consumer-heavy holiday season to retake third place with a 12.7% share. Lenovo continued its aggressive growth trajectory. Its 21.3% year-over-year growth (to 2.2 million units shipped) was by far the strongest growth rate of all vendors. However, it was not enough to overcome a strong Apple performance as Lenovo fell to fourth. The quarter also saw a new entrant into the top five: ASUS rode 11.0% year-over-year growth to a 7.1% share to overtake Toshiba and Acer.

Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) – As forecast, EMEA witnessed another quarter of double-digit year-over-year decline in PC shipments, as vendors remained engaged in clearing out the older inventories of Windows 8. The launch of new products with Windows 10 supported holiday season business, but did not reverse the negative trend. The late availability of PCs based on Skylake architecture delayed some purchases while IT budgets suffered from economic instability and currency volatility.

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) – The APeJ PC market posted a year-on-year decline with shipments affected by weak consumer demand and high inventory levels in the channels. Currency fluctuations contributed to an increase in pricing and effectively softer sales, while end users continued to focus their spending on other consumer devices. The market was particularly soft in India, where floods and weak demand during festival season contributed to low sales of PCs in the consumer space.

Japan – The market performed better than forecast and posted solid year-over-year growth, however a weaker Yen, high inventory, and lack of Windows 10 marketing continued to constrain PC sales.

Vendor Highlights

Lenovo maintained its top rank for the quarter and all of 2015, exceeding 20% market share for the year. Shipments reached nearly 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter, mostly due to strong volume in North America.

HP was the number 2 vendor, slightly outperforming the market although its volume declined across regions.

Dell remained the number 3 vendor at nearly 10.2 million units with above-market performance in the U.S.

ASUS outperformed the market and moved into the number 4 position. With nearly 6 million units and 7.9% market share, this was the best quarter for ASUS since 2012. Strong sales in Asia/Pacific boosted the growth.

Apple effectively tied* ASUS for the number 4 position in the fourth quarter, but was clearly ahead on an annual basis. The company continued its strong run and outperformed the market, increasing its share globally to 7.9% for the quarter and 7.5% for the year.

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