Lenovo in the Lead of the Global PC Market in Q4
Lenovo surpassed HP Inc. and moved into the No. 1 spot in the global PC market in the last quarter of 2018.
The top 3 vendors — Lenovo, HP Inc. and Dell, accounted for 63 percent of PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2018, 4 percent increase from that of last year.
SEE ALSO: Lenovo Tops Global PC Shipments in Q3 According To IDC
A major factor for Lenovo’s share gain was credited to a joint venture with Fujitsu formed in May 2018. Lenovo also had a strong quarter in the U.S. and has recorded three consecutive quarters of double-digit year-over-year shipment growth.
However, Lenovo seems to be an exception as the overall market has been stagnant. Gartner estimates worldwide PC shipments would fall 4.3 percent to 68.6 million units in Q4 2018. Lenovo and Dell were the only ones that increased their PC shipments, the rest of the market down 12.9 percent.
The Asia/Pacific PC market totaled 24.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2018, a 4.6 percent decline from the same period of 2017. Due to uncertainties of the U.S.-China trade relations, there was cautionary demand. In the fourth quarter of 2018, PC shipments in China declined 2.5 percent year over year, but shipments grew 5.6 percent sequentially.
IDC found that the PC market only shrank 0.4 percent to 258.5 million units, but warned the U.S.-China trade war could make things worse.
“The ongoing economic tensions between China and the United States continue to create a lot of uncertainty in the business environment in China,” IDC research manager Maciek Gornicki said in a statement.
“As demand for Chinese products in the U.S. drops, this particularly impacts businesses of all sizes from the manufacturing sector in China, which, in turn, translates to a drop in IT purchases by these companies. As a result, the PC market in China is expected to suffer bigger declines throughout the year. And if the trade war escalates further, we should expect spillover of the impact to other countries, particularly due to the expected fluctuations of the exchange rates impacting businesses across the region.”
IDC’s quarterly data shows that Lenovo ranked first, with a shipment of 16.75 million units and a market share of 24.6 percent; the second is HP, down 3.2 percent. Dell, Apple and Acer came next. IDC agrees with Gartner on the trajectory of the top companies. The rest of the market went down 11.2 percent according to IDC’s report.
