Sales of PCs have continued to decline during the third quarter but may have gone as low as they can, according to the number crunchers at IDC.
IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker says that the downward spiral for PC shipments continued during Q3 as global volumes declined 7.6 per cent year over year, with 68.2 million PCs shipped.
Demand and the global economy remained subdued, while PC shipments increased in each of the last two quarters. This slowed the rate of annual decline indicating that the market has bottomed out.
PC inventory is better than it has been for a while with less stock on hand.
IDC said that downward pressure on pricing persists and will likely remain an issue within the consumer and business sectors.
While most of the top five vendors experienced double-digit declines during the quarter, Apple suffered the most partly because it is pricy gear and partly because it stopped production during Covid.
HP grew thanks largely due to the normalising of inventory.
IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani said that the PC industry is on a slow path to recovery as a device refresh cycle and end of support for Windows 10 will help drive sales in the second half of 2024 and beyond. In the meantime, the PC industry will unfortunately experience more pain.
“The slowness in the industry is giving the supply chain an opportunity to explore procurement and production options outside China and this will likely remain a key issue going forward, second only to the advancement of AI within PCs,” he said.
IDC research vice president Linn Huang said: “Generative AI could be a watershed moment for the PC industry. While use cases have yet to be fully articulated, interest in the category is already strong. AI PCs promises organisations the ability to personalise the user experience at a deeper level all while being able to preserve data privacy and sovereignty.”
She thinks that this will boost prices as more of this gear is sold next year.
