PC Shipments Down in Q4 2013, Lenovo Gains Ground
PC shipments took a 5.6 percent dive in the fourth quarter of 2013.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) reports that PC shipments took a 5.6 percent dive in the fourth quarter of 2013, with only 82.2 million units sold. For the full year, unit shipments declined 10 percent from 2012, a record drop due to changes in mobility and personal computing. Commercial purchases helped prevent a larger decline while the consumer side remained weak.
"With shipments totaling 17.1 million PCs in 4Q13, the U.S. market contracted by -1.6 percent from the same quarter a year ago," the report states. "Consumers continued to take a wait-and-see approach, leading to delayed purchases. The migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 and 8 continued to drive some momentum in the enterprise sector and once again businesses fared better than consumers."
According to the report, Lenovo was the worldwide leader in the fourth quarter, owning 18.6 percent of the PC market. Hewlett Packard came in second with a 16.8 percent market share, down 8.5 percent from the same quarter in 2012. Dell ranked as third with a 12.2 percent market share, Acer in fourth with 6.7 percent and Asus with 6.1 percent.
In the United States, Hewlett Packard was in the lead with 24.6 percent of the local market share, down 12.3 percent from the same quarter in 2012. Dell came in second with 21.7 percent, and saw a 6.6 percent growth year over year. Lenovo also saw growth with a 9.8 percent market share and a 10.8 percent year over year growth. Apple came in fourth place followed by Toshiba.
"The PC market again came in very close to expectations, but unfortunately failed to significantly change the trajectory of growth," said Loren Loverde, Vice President, Worldwide PC Trackers. "Total shipments have now declined for seven consecutive quarters, and even the holiday shopping season was unable to inspire a turn in consumer spending. Although U.S. growth slipped a little in the fourth quarter, other regions all improved, reinforcing our view that growth rates will continue to improve gradually during 2014 despite remaining in negative territory."
In year over year numbers, Lenovo still led the global pack, owning 17.1 percent of the market and growing 2.7 percent compared to 2012. Hewlett Packard came in second with 16.6 percent, followed by Dell, Acer and Asus. The only PC vendor that grew in 2013 was Lenovo. Acer saw the biggest year-over-year drop: 28.5 percent.
On a local scale, HP came in first followed by Dell, Apple, Lenovo and Toshiba. Lenovo saw the most growth while Hewlett Packard declined 9.4 percent compared to 2012.
To see the charts, head here.
On a related note, Lenovo's huge lineup of new products at CES may be a sign of its success.
With Intel deciding to drop desktop and mobile product cycles to a two years schedule on alternating years because improvements on yearly releases are too small for most people to bother with anymore, you might end up waiting for a long time if all you are interested into is raw CPU performance.
The next 2-3 years should be interesting as far as seeing how much of a future is left for the traditional PC/laptop in normal people's everyday life is concerned.
Stagnation = no growth nor shrinkage.
PC sales have DROPPED by 1-13% depending on metric, market and market segment, which is technically worse than stagnation.
Also, even if Intel (and AMD) did make much faster CPUs, it still does not change the fact that 3-5 years old PCs are still adequate if not overkill for 80-90% of people so sales would still be regressing simply because an increasingly large chunk of the market does not need more processing power than it already has. The same thing will happen with mobile devices in 2-3 years when most of the functionality gap between SoC and desktop/laptop parts will be gone.
This is true only if most people still needed more processing power than what they can already fit in their pockets. Once phones and tablets are powerful enough to handle most people's everyday computing requirements (which is already the case for many) then it does not matter how much "better" PCs might be since the extra capabilities are unnecessary.
If I didn't need a PC for CAD, HDL, programming and PC-based games, I could do just about everything else from a tablet like the N7v2 with BT keyboard+mouse and external HDMI/DP display.
This is true only if most people still needed more processing power than what they can already fit in their pockets. Once phones and tablets are powerful enough to handle most people's everyday computing requirements (which is already the case for many) then it does not matter how much "better" PCs might be since the extra capabilities are unnecessary.
If I didn't need a PC for CAD, HDL, programming and PC-based games, I could do just about everything else from a tablet like the N7v2 with BT keyboard+mouse and external HDMI/DP display.
Except that apps designed for Android or iOS is targeted for touch based usage. HP has a 21.5" Android "desktop" selling for $399 and most people find it useless because of exactly that. It is not enough just to blow up the display into bigger area, the software has to designed for it. Traditional PC desktop applications pack a lot more info into the available display area because it is expected the display item will be large enough. All apps in the mobile devices assume the display area is small and hence if the same UI is projected to large screen, they simply looks too big to be functional. Think about trying to perform multiple select in "file manager" in Android or iOS, and how this is normally performed in desktop, that will be really awkward trying to replicate mobile UI into desktop environment.
And the heat, something so small as a mobile device cannot have the same mean to dissipate heat as a desktop. The form factor of these devices put a ceiling of what they can possibly do.
This is true only if most people still needed more processing power than what they can already fit in their pockets. Once phones and tablets are powerful enough to handle most people's everyday computing requirements (which is already the case for many) then it does not matter how much "better" PCs might be since the extra capabilities are unnecessary.
If I didn't need a PC for CAD, HDL, programming and PC-based games, I could do just about everything else from a tablet like the N7v2 with BT keyboard+mouse and external HDMI/DP display.
Except that apps designed for Android or iOS is targeted for touch based usage. HP has a 21.5" Android "desktop" selling for $399 and most people find it useless because of exactly that. It is not enough just to blow up the display into bigger area, the software has to designed for it. Traditional PC desktop applications pack a lot more info into the available display area because it is expected the display item will be large enough. All apps in the mobile devices assume the display area is small and hence if the same UI is projected to large screen, they simply looks too big to be functional. Think about trying to perform multiple select in "file manager" in Android or iOS, and how this is normally performed in desktop, that will be really awkward trying to replicate mobile UI into desktop environment.
And the heat, something so small as a mobile device cannot have the same mean to dissipate heat as a desktop. The form factor of these devices put a ceiling of what they can possibly do.
You're missing his point. The vast majority of people don't need traditional PC applications because all they do is browse the web, play games, and consume content. Yes Android and iOS have ceilings, but those are high enough where no one other than gamers and those who do work on a PC really need them. That's a lot smaller market than the everyone that needed them 5-10 years ago. Even the student market is shrinking because Chromebooks are a lot better for education and less expensive.
On top of all that, Microsoft is going in the opposite direction by trying to make Windows one size fits all. In trying to compete with the iPad, they are alienating what is left of their core market (those who work on a PC) by trying to force an unproductive touch UI on everyone with no option to turn it off.
The form factor of these devices put a ceiling of what they can possibly do.
That can and most likely will change as desktop, AIO and transformable Android devices become more common.
As for the heat, this nowhere near as much of a limitation to what can be done on Android as the lack of software and external connectivity are. Poor application design often accounts for a huge chunk of some applications' CPU usage too so more power may have some perverse effects there... Android games, particularly 2D ones, seem notoriously poorly optimized.
You're missing his point. The vast majority of people don't need traditional PC applications because all they do is browse the web, play games, and consume content. Yes Android and iOS have ceilings, but those are high enough where no one other than gamers and those who do work on a PC really need them. That's a lot smaller market than the everyone that needed them 5-10 years ago. Even the student market is shrinking because Chromebooks are a lot better for education and less expensive.
On top of all that, Microsoft is going in the opposite direction by trying to make Windows one size fits all. In trying to compete with the iPad, they are alienating what is left of their core market (those who work on a PC) by trying to force an unproductive touch UI on everyone with no option to turn it off.
The current sales figure has not shown "vast majority of people" that use tablets are more than desktop users yet. Total shipment for tablets in 2013 is still less than the total shipments for PC in 2013. It is still too early to say there are definitely more people prefering tablets than using a PC.
As for mobile phones, PC sales figure has never been able to match the level of mobile phone sales figure. There are simply more phone users than PC users. This has not changed so I do not take mobile phone sales into consideration. Currently we are seeing a transition for phone users to switch from feature phones to smart phones and therefore the unit shipment for smartphone has surpassed PC shipment.
Chromebook should be classified as PC due to its form factor. Makers of Chromebook are mostly from traditional PC vendors.
Except Chromebooks do not run traditional Wintel applications which makes them as useful (or useless depending on which side of that fence you are standing) as Android-based devices for everyday computing. Most Chromebooks also use the same SoCs phones and tablets use with more or less exactly the same support hardware around them; just a bigger screen, battery and a keyboard attached. So if you consider Chromebooks as PCs, you pretty much have to also accept tablets and smartphones as PC equivalents, albeit with smaller screens and optional external keyboard instead of built-in. Most tablets and smartphones are built by PC OEMs too.
The PC is not a form factor; it is merely the idea of being able to carry computing out on a personal / private scale. The traditional PC has a few traditional form factors attached to it along with a mostly Wintel history.
As for total shipments, IDC numbers say 49 million tablets were sold during Q1-2013 and that it was a 140+% year-on-year growth. That puts tablets well ahead of the ~90 million PC sales for the whole year even if all three other quarters were only half as strong. With explosive growth like that while (traditional) PC sales are regressing, people's enthusiasm for mobile computing is pretty difficult to ignore.