HP reclaims PC crown from Lenovo - Gartner

Analyst suspects vendor may have bought market share in Q4 as it got the better of Chinese rival

HP has regained the global PC crown from Lenovo but may have taken a margin hit in the process, says Gartner.

According to the market watcher – but controversially not rival IDC – Lenovo ousted HP as top dog in Q3 2012 in a development that underlined just how rapidly the market has shifted in favour of Asia-based players.

But three months on, Gartner's figures suggest HP reclaimed its crown in Q4, shipping 14.6 million PCs to Lenovo's 14 million.

Gartner said the market is increasingly being eroded by tablets as total unit shipments sank 4.9 per cent to 90.3 million units and EMEA shipments plunged 9.6 per cent to 28.1 million units.

But – despite the recent will-they-won't-they saga over the PSG PC arm – it is a market HP apparently still takes seriously, as Gartner noted that the vendor probably sacrificed profit in its quest to win back share during the quarter. This included some large retail deals targeting the Windows 8 launch and holiday sales.

While Gartner's Q3 numbers showed Lenovo in first place, IDC's had HP remaining as market leader. At the time, HP took the unusual step of siding with one analyst over another, as it praised IDC's numbers for being "more comprehensive".

This quarter, the two analysts were in agreement over the pecking order, with IDC putting HP on 16.7 per cent market share compared with Lenovo's 15.8 per cent.

Turning back to Gartner's figures, in EMEA, where HP still dwarves all competition, HP's share rose fractionally to 19.1 per cent despite it shipping 8.3 per cent fewer units than Q4 2011. Lenovo rose to second spot following 29.4 per cent shipment growth.

Acer and Asus both had poor quarters in EMEA as their shipments fell by 14.6 per cent and 13.6 per cent respectively. But the real loser was the once-mighty Dell, which now holds a market share of just 8.4 per cent in the region following a 26 per cent plunge in shipments.

Gartner issued a bleak prognosis for the long-term future of the PC market, noting that tablet uptake is causing PC users not to replace older PCs.

Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said: "Whereas once we imagined a world in which individual users would have both a PC and a tablet as personal devices, we increasingly suspect that most individuals will shift consumption activity to a personal tablet, and perform creative and administrative tasks on a shared PC.

"There will be some individuals who retain both, but we believe they will be exception and not the norm. Therefore, we hypothesise that buyers will not replace secondary PCs in the household, instead allowing them to age out and shifting consumption to a tablet."