PC shipments slide 6.4 per cent in Q4

EMEA continues a steady decline despite improved commercial demand

Sales of PCs have declined across EMEA for another quarter, reducing 6.4 per cent compared to Q4 in 2012 which means the entire market only hit 88.3m units for the full year.

Chrystelle Labesque, research manager for EMEA personal computing at IDC, said consumer demand continued to be weak although commercial demand improved.

"As expected, the PC market contracted across EMEA in 4Q13. The holiday season offers were unable to inspire an upturn in consumer spending, which continued to concentrate on tablets," she said.

Notebook sales also suffered from "negative trends" in the last quarter of the year, with portable PC shipments in EMEA shrinking nine per cent in the quarter, Labesque said.

"On the other hand, enterprises have been maximising their budgets before year end, resulting in stabilisation on the desktop PC market. Desktop PC shipments in EMEA posted a slight decline of 1.7 per cent while in Western Europe there was a small rebound with growth of two per cent," she said.

For the full year, PC sales volumes slid 15.7 per cent on 2012, with portable PC sales shrinking 19 per cent and desktops by 9.6 per cent.

The pace of contraction slowed during the second half of 2013, however, Labesque added, and in Western Europe, commercial shipments rose 1.9 per cent against a consumer sales decline of 8.3 per cent.

That made for a Western European Q4 decline of 3.5 per cent, she said. HP remained the leader, with Lenovo second, Acer third, and Dell fourth.