Once again the two major analysts agree on a topic close to our hearts-- EMEA PC shipment continue falling during Q4 2013. Gartner says the decline is "less steep" at -6.7% Y-o-Y, while IDC describes shipments as "constrained."
According to Gartner EMEA Q4 2013 shipments total 25.8 million units with shipment declines across all regions, if less so than the last 7 quarters.
Consumers continue replacing PCs only on a "needed basis," since new form factors suffer from either limited availability or higher than average prices. On the other hand tablets, especially Androids, make popular, attractively priced, holiday presents.
"In E. Europe, the decline has slowed to single-digit numbers in most countries, where shipments were driven by the professional PC segment," the analyst says. "The strength of the consumer mobile PC segment was mostly apparent in W. Europe, whereas in E. Europe the declining prices of Android tablets made them the preferred choice of Christmas present for consumers over PCs."
HP remains top vendor with 19.7% Q4 2013 market share despite shipments falling by -4.7% Y-o-Y. Lenovo follows as the only vendor seeing growth (23.7% Y-o-Y) thanks to popular ultramobile products, followed by Acer with 10.7% market share.
Despite Q-o-Q growth of 28% through high Transformer Book T100 demand 4th placing Asus shipments still decline by -14.1% on a Y-o-Y basis. In 5th place is Dell with flat (0.1% Y-o-Y) shipments.
IDC is still to release in-depth EMEA analysis, but its description of EMEA Q4 2014 shipments is "constrained." Enterprise shipments are relatively strong thanks to year-end budget spending, but soft shipments and weak demand lead to a "much more depressed" consumer market.
On a global level the analysts disagree somewhat on the extent of the decline felt in the PC market during Q4-- Gartner says WW Q4 2013 shipments are down by -6.9% to 82.6m units, while IDC reports declines of -5.6% Y-o-Y on shipments reaching 82.2m units. For full year 2013 both agree shipments are down by -10% from 2012, a record drop dampened somewhat by commercial purchases.
"The PC market again came in very close to expectations, but unfortunately failed to significantly change the trajectory of growth," IDC remarks. Gartner echoes such comments, saying "Strong growth in tablets continued to negatively impact PC growth in emerging markets... the first connected device for consumers [in emerging markets] is most likely a smartphone, and their first computing device is a tablet."
