Lenovo claims pole position in IDC and Gartner PC market share reports
Lenovo has once again claimed the number one spot in PCs shipped globally, with both IDC and Gartner listing the Chinese multinational as shipping around 16,000 desktops, notebooks, and workstations in the third quarter of 2018.
In IDC's third-quarter PC rankings, Lenovo was reported as being accountable for 16,152 -- 24 percent -- of the total devices shipped in the three-month period, while Gartner reported Lenovo as shipping 15,889 units during the same period.
In total, IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker reported 67,387 individual desktops, notebooks, and workstations were shipped; similarly, Gartner had the total at 67,206.
Coming in second to Lenovo for both analyst firms was HP, with IDC's 15,359 total and Gartner's 14,629 figure giving the company an approximate 22 percent market share for the quarter.
Dell claimed the third spot in both reports, with 11,466 and 10,737 units listed across both reports.
IDC had Acer in fourth place, shipping 4,874 units, while Gartner gave Acer fifth spot, with just over 4,000 PCs shipped.
Fourth for Gartner was Apple, with 4,928 devices. IDC placed Apple fifth, highlighting that sales for the iPhone maker had reduced from 5,387 devices in the third quarter of 2017 down to 4,762 for the current reported period.
By IDC's metric, overall PC devices shipped had reduced year over year, from 67,971 in the third quarter last year. Gartner, however, had the unit totals listed as an increase of only 50 units.
Devices shipped during 3Q18 and 3Q17, according to Gartner and IDC
"The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades," principal analyst at Gartner Mikako Kitagawa 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."
Pulling out statistics from the United States, Gartner's report showed Microsoft scraping into the top five device manufacturers, with 602 Windows devices shipped during the three-month period.
Gartner's statistics include desk-based PCs, notebook PCs, and ultramobile premiums such as Microsoft Surface, but not Chromebooks or iPads.
Gartner had HP providing 4,531 devices; Dell as 3,831; global leader Lenovo as shipping 2,276 devices; and Apple accounting for 2,022 of the total 14,771 units shipped in the US.
IDC listed US shipped devices as 17.2 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan, IDC said that although the region posted a single-digit decline, the results were above expectations. Gartner said PC shipments in the region totalled 24.3 million units, which it reported as being a 0.3 percent increase from the third quarter of 2017.
PC demand from the commercial segment buoyed the market, Gartner said, noting that the consumer segment continued to be challenging in terms of unit sales.
PC shipments in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa reached 18.9 million units in the third quarter of 2018, according to Gartner, which represented a 1.1 percent increase year over year.
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