Lenovo is King of the PC Market, Says Gartner; HP Says No

It's a comical tug of war when it comes to who's the current leader of the PC market. Gartner says it's Lenovo Group Ltd. IDC Worldwide says it's still the long-running champ Hewlett-Packard. The latter company even issued a statement, backing up IDC's report, claiming it's still the #1 PC maker.

Still, both reports point to a 73-year-old company struggling against rivals like Lenovo and Dell while a new CEO brings it into the new era of computing. The company has spun off its webOS operating system into an open platform, and just recently introduced new products based on Microsoft's upcoming touch-based OS, Windows 8. It's still trying to figure out how to attack the smartphone market.

In terms of shipments worldwide, Gartner said that Lenovo had grown its market share of the PC sector to 15.7-percent by shipping an estimated 13.77 million units during 3Q12, up nearly 10-percent from the same quarter last year. Lenovo currently has a market value of $8.2 billion.

"We are establishing even deeper roots in each major market around the world," Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang stated. "In addition to localized sales and distribution teams in major markets, we are establishing an even stronger manufacturing footprint."

As for HP, Gartner said that the company's global share of the PC sector was 15.5-percent after shipping 13.55 million units, down 16.4-percent from the same quarter in 2011. The report stated that this was the first time HP had not been in the #1 position since 2006.

Naturally HP responded to the Gartner report. "While there are a variety of PC share reports in the market, some don’t measure the market in its entirety. The IDC analysis includes the very important workstation segment and therefore is more comprehensive. In that IDC report, HP occupies the No. 1 position in PCs."

As indicated, IDC's report contradicts Gartner's findings, but only marginally. HP's share of the PC sector in 3Q12 was 15.9-percent due to 13,946 units shipped, a 16.4-percent drop in growth from the same quarter in 2011. Lenovo is listed as the #2 manufacturer in the IDC report, with a market share of 15.7-percent due to a shipment of 13,824 units, up 10.2-percent from 3Q11.

"HP saw shipments contract more than 16-percent from a year ago and narrowly held on to the top vendor spot. Distractions caused by its reorganization, challenges in integrating its enterprise acquisitions, and an unclear strategy to regain its course remain key obstacles," IDG reports.

Despite a slowing growth in Asia, Lenovo continued to register the highest yearly growth among all top vendors, the report said. Dell dropped into third place in 3Q12, claiming only 10.8-percent of the market with 9,499 units sold. Acer was fourth with a 9.6-percent market share, and Asus claimed the fifth position with 7.3-percent of the market.

"PCs are going through a severe slump," said Jay Chou, senior research analyst at IDC's Worldwide PC Tracker. "A weak global economy as well as questions about PC market saturation and delayed replacement cycles are certainly a factor, but the hard question of what is the 'it' product for PCs remain unanswered."

Reuters reports that HP shares finally closed 1.32-percent lower at $14.18 on Wednesday. At one point, shares dropped to $14.02, its lowest since October 2002, before the end of the day.

  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer
    I'd take a Lenovo over an HP any day of the week. Hell, I bought my T430 (great machine) after selling my X130e to my sister (another good machine, and it's a perfect fit for her), after previously recommending my mom buy my dad a consumer-grade Lenovo (which isn't the fastest laptop on the planet, but is great considering the price). Now that her HP has died, that's her main computer, too.

    Now, in fairness, that old HP Pavilion lasted many, many more years than it deserved to given the inexplicable design of the cooling system. But one day it started just randomly shutting off a minute or so after booting. I took it completely apart, blew out the heat sink, put some AS5 on the CPU, put it all back together, and it sort of works, but it still shuts down when you tax the CPU. I'm guessing a temp sensor is shot...but really, when you put some black tape over the fan intake because the fan is no longer there, and design the cooling system so that air is sucked in through the keyboard, it's a miracle the thing lasted as long as it did.
    Reply
  • el33t
    I own a Lenovo Y580 and I must say, I love it!! No regrets at all. Price for performance ratio is amazing for this machine... EXCELLENT MACHINE!
    Reply
  • sixdegree
    This just in: Someone claims something, someone else disagree.
    Reply
  • luciferano
    Even Dell gets my vote over HP, let alone Lenovo. HP may or may not have more market share if we include workstations, but that doesn't make them better. Lenovo wins in quality over HP, no doubt about it IMO. It's not like HP has no good products, but Lenovo has a higher level of consistent quality overall from what I've seen personally as well as from what I've read.
    Reply
  • Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer
    sixdegreeThis just in: Has-been company butthurt that they lost marketshare to a manufacturer that makes better products.Fixed it for you. :p
    Reply
  • nforce4max
    Can't make crap and expect people to continue to buy it forever. I think that many will look at Lenovo as a quality brand for a while like Compaq, Dell, IBM, and HP. Even Apple is starting to look generic and certainly their build quality has sunk but personally quality should be priority. There is in general a lack of quality and uniquely special products that become a must have for everyone.
    Reply
  • ivanto
    What is surprising to me is that HP's global shipment of 13.9M units is pretty small in comparison to Samsung and Apple shipments of smartphones and tablets. Lenovo's sold 13.8M PC and it's less than Apple's 17M iPads and Samsung's 30+M Galaxy S3.

    That's how old but proven tech is crashed by new and easier to carry around "gadgets"
    ~IvanTO
    Reply
  • livebriand
    That's what happens when one company makes crap and another company doesn't...
    Reply
  • assasin32
    Can't knock Lenovo, family member bought one and I expected to have to reinstal the whole OS to get rid of the crapware and to my surprise there wasn't really any minus Mcafee beyond that there was a trial of MS Office and a bunch of really small programs that didn't hog any resources that did some neat things like adjust the monitor brightness by using the webcam if you have one, etc. So I uninstalled Mcafee and just diabled the others from auto booting and it was about felt like it was a clean instal of the OS there just wasn't any junk.

    But I was surprised again when I poped open the side of the case and found they took the extra step to instal silicone gromets on the fans to reduce vibration and noise which explains why I never hear the machine running. Overall the internal quality is good considering the parts and what it is using, granted we typically use higher quality stuff while building our own but I will say it be hard for me to match that machine in particular at the price point it was bought for had I built one myself. (was bought on sale not retail, but still)
    Reply
  • trumpeter1994
    el33tI own a Lenovo Y580 and I must say, I love it!! No regrets at all. Price for performance ratio is amazing for this machine... EXCELLENT MACHINE!I own a y580 too, got it to take with me into college and I've also had no problems with it.... not to mention getting it for ~$900 base price was a steal
    Reply