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PC shipments mark lowest recorded volume since Q1 2009: IDC

IDC analysts noted a volume decline below 69 million units represents the lowest recorded volume since the first quarter of 2009.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor

Following up Gartner results on Thursday, IDC also released its first quarter recap for worldwide PC shipments.

Most of the digits were noticeably different, but the overall themes were the same.

IDC analysts tracked approximately 68.5 million units shipped worldwide during the first quarter of 2015, down 6.7 percent year-over-year.

The silver lining is that result came out slightly ahead of previous expectations.

It should be noted IDC defines the PC category a bit more broadly than Gartner, specificing data spans desktops, laptops, Chromebooks, Workstations and Ultraslim notebooks but not handhelds, x86 servers and tablets.

Nevertheless, analysts noted a volume decline below 69 million units represented the lowest recorded volume since the first quarter of 2009.

Continued declines appear all but inevitable as IDC senior research analyst Jay Chou warned in the report that "we can expect additional consolidation in the PC market."

That's thanks to what IDC analysts defined as a clash of "headwinds," including "inventory build-up of Windows Bing based notebooks, commercial slow down following the XP refresh and constrained demand in many regions due to currency fluctuations and unfavorable economic indicators."

Stateside, the bleeding is much slower at only a one percent drop in over the course of a year as 14.2 million PCs shipped in the United States last quarter. IDC higlighted growth for emerging PC verticals, such as Chromebooks, Bing, Ultraslims and Convertibles.

Desktop shipments, however, were said to be "sluggish."

Looking closer at the vendors, the global leadership board was identical with Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer and Asus from first place to fifth respectively.

Hewlett-Packard remained at the top on the domestic charts followed by Lenovo in second place. Lenovo, Apple and Toshiba rounded out the top five U.S. PC vendor chart.

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