Lenovo takeover HP as PC King, worldwide, for the first time ever.
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| Lenovo, world’s new PC king. |
Chinese giant raced ahead of Hewlett Packard (HP) by the narrowest of margins – just 0.2% to grab 15.7% market share compared to HP’s 15.5%.
However, HP are now denying the PC crown is no longer theirs in a statement released today:
“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.”
Dell came in at No. 3 with 10.5%, followed by Acer (10%) and Asus with just over 7%.
However, worldwide PC shipments fell almost 10% y-o-y to 87.5 million in Q3, analysts Gartner confirmed today, although was identical to the PC shipments figure in Q2.
The PC figures includes desktops, notebooks and netbooks, but excludes the massively popular tablets like the iPad, which has been blamed for slowing down PC demand. By comparison, Apple shifted 17m iPads in Q2.
This is also massive milestone in the PC market considering HP has held the top spot since Q3 2006.
Lenovo has been “aggressive” on pricing, Gartner noted, in the professional market which helped it achieve above average growth (+10% in total), while HP is currently restructuring its PC and tablets business, after almost ditching hardware altogether last year, suffering -16% growth slump.
The Palo Alto giant’s main concern is achieving a ‘good balance’ between market share and margin protection, Gartner noted.
The slowdown in PC demand was marked by a decline of 8.3% in Q3 compared with the same time 2011, although was dubbed “a transitional quarter” with consumers and sellers awaiting the launch of Microsoft’s long awaited Windows 8 platform, out this month.
“The third quarter was also before Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system release, so shipments were less vigorous as vendors and their channel partners liquidated inventory,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
However, Kitagawa also warned “the professional market will not adopt Windows 8 PCs immediately after the release,” so it may be a while before we see a resurgence in the ailing PC market, if at all.
Locally, Asia Pacific shipments fell over 5% to 31.3 million, blamed on weakness in the China market.
In the US market, home grown brands HP, Dell and Apple took the top 3 spots, with Lenovo lagged in No. 4 place.
“Retailers were conservative in placing orders as they responded to weak back-to-school sales,” Kitagawa said.
