The commercial PC market had been buoyant in the first half of the year, and there are already indications that trend is continuing in the hardware market in Q3, according to beancounters at Context
According to Context, the start of the third quarter has seen the established pattern of demand in the commercial market remaining strong, but consumer sales are still weak.
In the UK the figure commercial PC sales improved by 10.8 per cent but there was a fall on the consumer side, which was down by 10.9 per cent. Upgrades are driving most of those sales with customers looking to get themselves on a more recent OS before Windows 7 support ends in January.
Desktop sales were up by 25 per cent in July and notebooks also improved 11 per cent. Workstations sales increased too.
On the consumer side, the challenges continued with weak demand leading to a two per cent drop in sales with notebooks being particularly grim. Ultra-slim portables and Chromebooks were popular, but the volumes of those products are not large enough to reverse the overall trend, Context said.
For the rest of this year, the expectation is that the current features of the market will support more commercial sales.
Context senior analyst, Marie-Christine Pygott expects commercial demand will remain active throughout the second half of 2019 as migration to Windows 10 continues.
“While a range of promotional activities during the upcoming back-to-school and Black Friday periods are likely to lead to a temporary improvement in the consumer growth trend, overall demand is expected to remain soft,” she added.
