Commercial demand sees Lenovo top Q3 PC table

Weak consumer market offsets strong B2B sales, analyst says

Lenovo was the top supplier in the worldwide vendor PC shipment market for the third quarter of 2018, according to Gartner figures.

The vendor held 23.6 per cent of the market share for the quarter and saw an overall growth of 10.7 per cent from Q3 2017.

The analyst firm stated that this growth was driven by regained traction in the commercial market and its joint venture with Fujitsu, which saw Lenovo take a 51 per cent stake in Fujitsu's PC business.

However, weakness in the consumer market led to a flat growth rate of 0.1 per cent from Q3 2017, despite a steady demand from the enterprise sector driven by the ongoing migration to Windows 10.

Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, stated that it expects this corporate demand to decrease by the end of 2020.

"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades," the analyst said.

"We expect the Windows 10 upgrade cycle to continue through 2020 at which point the upgrade demand will diminish.

"Despite the third quarter typically showing strong consumer PC sales due to the back-to-school season, weakness in consumer PC demand continued, offsetting the strong sales in the business market."

HP claimed second place in the market, with a share of 21.8 per cent.

Gartner stated that the vendor showed "showed strong desktop shipment growth, which indicated strong demand among corporate buyers."

Dell placed third in the rankings, seeing a 5.3 per cent growth in the third quarter, representing its tenth consecutive quarter of shipment growth.

Apple and Acer rounded out the top five vendors.

Chip shortage

Kitagawa warned that the ongoing Intel central processing unit (CPU) shortage could impact the PC market in the future, including cost increases, although she does not predict any long-term impacts to the market.

"Although the third-quarter results did not show any material impact, the Intel CPU shortage could influence the PC market moving forward with price increases and changes to the vendor landscape," she stated.

"While this shortage will have some short-term impacts, Gartner does not see any lasting impact on overall PC demand.

"Current expectation is that the shortage will continue into 2019, but Intel will prioritise the high-end CPU as well as the CPUs for business PCs."

Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q18 (Thousands of Units)