Australian PC market makes a comeback in Q3 2016

The Australian PC market is finally showing signs of improvement after its poor performance in the first half of 2016, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).

More than 990,000 PCs were shipped in Australia in the third quarter of 2016, representing a year-on-year growth of 3.5 percent, beating IDC's forecast by roughly 7 percent.

The future seemed grim for the Australian PC industry following the closure of Dick Smith and Toshiba, as well as preliminary findings by both IDC and Gartner predicting a decline in global PC shipments.

"Seasonal impact seemed to have been minimal, as the market bounced back after a sluggish start in the first half of the year due to Dick Smith and Toshiba exiting from the market," said Sagar Raghavendra, client devices analyst at IDC Australia.

"Harvey Norman's Modern PC program also seems to have contributed to this growth in the consumer segment."

The majority of the growth was driven by the commercial segment, at 6 percent year on year, while the consumer segment experienced a growth of 1 percent year on year, according to IDC.

Early inventory stocks for the holiday season and continued deployments in state education departments also contributed to this growth.

The notebook and desktop PC market grew by 3.2 percent year on year, while the convertible form factor grew at 91 percent year on year.

"Increasing number of corporate and public sector agencies are deploying convertibles in large numbers; there is a healthy competition in the market between convertibles and detachables," Raghavendra said.

HP leads Australian PC market, with a market share of 28.1 percent, a 4.8 percent increase from the previous year. Coming in at second place is Lenovo, with a market share of 18.8 percent, followed by Dell, at 15.5 percent.

Apple's market share is sitting at 12.8 percent, a 5.3 percent decline from the previous year, while Acer increased its share by 1.5 percent to 10.8 percent.

The upward trend in the PC market follows local reports of Samsung talking with Lenovo to sell its entire PC portfolio for an estimated $850 million. Samsung, however, later gave a statement refuting the rumour.

If the sale does go through, it will follow Samsung's sale of its printing business to US giant HP for over $1 billion, which was approved in October.

According to web analytics company StatCounter, internet usage on mobile devices also exceeded usage on PCs for the first time worldwide in October.