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Gartner: Worldwide PC shipments dropped 10.9 percent in Q2

UPDATED: The IDC has also chimed in on the global PC market as well as the Lenovo-HP battle.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
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The PC market slump continued by double-digit points through the second quarter, based on the latest figures from Gartner.

To put this into a more alarming perspective, this drop marks the fifth consecutive quarter of declining PC shipments -- the longest duration of decline in the history of the PC market, declared the market research firm.

Specifically, Gartner found that 76 million units shipped worldwide during the second quarter of 2013, a 10.9 percent decrease from the same period last year.

All of the top five vendors -- Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer and Asus -- experienced declines from the second quarter of 2012 to the second quarter of 2013.

Gartner analysts highlighted Dell in particular because it actually experienced a slightly smaller decline than the previous several quarters thanks to better growth in the United States in Japan despite slowdowns across Asia and the EMEA region.

Researchers also called out Asus and Acer for plummeting numbers on an annual basis, which were attributed to their decisions to drop out of the netbook market.

The silver lining from the report (if there is one) could be the U.S. market.

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Not only did Gartner find a 1.4 percent decline on an annual basis, but researchers also pinpointed that the market grew by 8.5 percent sequentially.

Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa remarked in the report that the smaller decline, which was said to be less than what was seen over the past seven quarters, is thanks to growth within the professional segment.

Three of the major professional PC suppliers, HP, Dell and Lenovo, all registered better than U.S. average growth rate. The end of Windows XP support potentially drove the remaining PC refresh in the U.S. professional market.

UPDATE: The IDC followed up with its own report about the state of the global PC market on Wednesday afternoon.

Basically, the market intelligence agency concurred with Gartner this time around on both the continued decline of the PC market -- albeit with a more significant drop of 11.4 percent.

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Furthermore, IDC figures also confirmed that Lenovo is the top dog in what is left of the global PC market, surpassing HP by a very narrow margin.

Charts via Gartner, IDC

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