14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, we reported that, according to IDC, shipments of personal computers during the first half of 2014 had gone down. Gartner has corroborated this conclusion, but only to an extent. For according to its own findings, things weren't nearly as bad as IDC thinks.
For those who want a summary of previous findings, IDC reached the conclusion that PC shipments were of 73.4 million in the first quarter of 2014.
That meant that shipments went down, year-over-year, by 4.4% compared to the January-March period of 2013.
Gartner has reached a different conclusion, however. While it, too, found an overall decline in PC shipments, it wasn't as bad.
With PC shipments estimated at 76.6 million unit for January-March, the decline has been pegged at merely 1.7%.
By region, shipments were of 14.1 million in the USA, 2.1% above the same quarter of 2013. HP led with 25% of all shipments.
Sony is being forced out of the market apparently, while Lenovo, HP and Dell are duking it out over the majority of the segment.
In fact, while Lenovo and HP continue to make it hard to figure out which is in the lead, the difference between them and Dell has lessened. 1Q14 was the third quarter of consecutive shipment growth for Dell.
On the flip side, HP experienced a quick shipment growth as well, especially in EMEA (Europe, Asia and the Middle East).
Speaking of EMEA, 22.9 million units sold there, 0.3% more than in 2013. Professional PC sales were good, as many corporations upgraded from Windows XP to PCs running more recent operating systems.
Nevertheless, in the end, it was Lenovo that experienced the quickest rate of positive growth, at 10.9%, making this the seventh consecutive quarter of growth for the Chinese company. Ironic, considering the fact that sales in China actually slowed down.
If Lenovo is allowed to finally buy IBM's server business division, it will no doubt experience further growth. It might do it even if it doesn't get permission, although in that case, it might have to deal with some uncomfortable inquiries into how it does its job.
After all, it will be something of a political nightmare if the Pentagon and FBI find that Lenovo's acquisition plans are too potentially harmful. It's trying to buy the company that provides the US national security agencies with PCs after all.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Acer was the only PC maker among the strong brands that didn't experience some sort of on-year shipment growth.