PC shipments in Western Europe totalled 10,9-million units in the second quarter of 2013, a decline of 19,8% compared with the same period in 2012, according to Gartner.
“The market exit of the netbook PC, and vendors reducing their inventory to get the new Intel chips and Windows 8.1 have fuelled the decline in Western Europe,” says Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner.
All PC segments in Western Europe declined. Mobile and desktop PC shipments declined 23,9% and 12,2%, respectively. PC shipments in the professional market declined 13,%, while the consumer PC market decreased 25,8% in the second quarter of 2013.
Despite a 17,4% decline in shipments, HP remained in the number one position.
Acer exhibited the worst performance of the top five vendors with a decline of 44,7% in the second quarter of 2013. Most of Acer’s decline came from shifting its portfolio away from netbooks to Android tablets.
Lenovo had another strong quarter and moved to the number three position, only 47 000 PC units behind Acer. Lenovo was the only top 10 vendor to exhibit double-digit growth (18,9%) in the second quarter of 2013.
Dell exhibited the slowest decline in the past 12 months. “Dell’s improvement is attributed to its strategic shift from profitability protection to market share gain,” says Escherich.
“We can expect some attractive new PCs in the stores for the fourth quarter of 2013, running Windows 8.1 with thinner form factors and longer battery life enabled by Intel’s Haswell processors,” Escherich adds.
“These PCs will compete with high-end tablets and will be complemented by a new generation of Atom-based devices that will compete with low-end basic tablets. Although this will not fully compensate for the ongoing PC decline, it does create an opportunity for profit in the midrange and more high end PC segments.”