The PC Industry Shrank Another 9%, Gartner Says

Gartner released its quarterly PC report and the news isn't good. But it isn't all bad either.

Worldwide, the PC industry declined another 8.6% to 80.3 million units total. That's the lowest number of PC sold in a quarter since the economy crashed in 2008, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said.

The PC market continues to be hurt by consumers choosing tablets instead, particularly low-cost Android tablets in emerging markets, Kitagawa said.

Lenovo was still the No. 1 biggest vendor worldwide, with nearly 18% share, a position it took from HP last quarter. HP had 17% share, Dell had nearly 12%, Acer had 8% and Asus had 6%.

The good news was that the PC industry actually grew 3.5% over the year-ago quarter in the U.S. This is the "back-to-school" quarter and that's why people were buying more PCs.

Kitagawa believes that the worst is over for the U.S. PC market. Although she expects the U.S. market to continue to decline, it won't shrink as drastically in the coming years as it has since 2010, she predicts.

In the U.S., HP was the No. 1 vendor with about 27% share, followed by Dell with 21%, Apple with 13%, Lenovo at 10% and Toshiba with 7%.

Table 1
Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q13 (Units)

Note: Data includes desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad.

Source: Gartner (August 2013)