Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

IDC expects further IT spending slowdown

Posted on August 14, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpIDC has taken a second look into its crystal ball and revised its earlier forecast for worldwide IT spending. Of course, the new numbers are lower.

In May IDC forecast 4.9 percent growth, but now it expects 4.6 percent. What’s more, if tablets and smartphones are taken out of the equation, spending will be up just 1.7 percent. IDC’s May forecast was 2.6 percent.

IDC cites a slowdown in economic growth in emerging markets as the main reason behind its decision to lower forecasts. Growth is slowing down in China and Asia Pacific. Europe is not even worth mentioning. However, it’s not all bad news. IT spending in the US is now expected to increase 4.6 percent this year, up from 4.2 percent forecasted in May.

There’s some good news for mobile outfits, too. IDC expects spending on tablets to be up 39 percent this year, up from a May forecast of 32.5 percent. Smartphone projections are also up, 18.5 percent over 17.2 percent in May.

Unsurprisingly there is nothing good to report on the PC front. PC sales worldwide are now expected to decline 7.2 percent this year. The May forecast was just 2.6 percent in the red. That’s a huge revision in the space of less than three months and the PC market is clearly in worse shape than analysts thought.

Pricey PCs kill any hint of recovery

Posted on August 13, 2013 by - News, Products

pc-sales-slumpPC shipments have been slow for months and they should start bottoming out soon, but the PC cause is being undermined by pricey laptops, analysts believe. A new breed of high-end designs based on Haswell parts is shipping, but their prices seem out of touch with reality. 

Buyers just don’t want to pay the premium for new chips, touchscreens or new form factors – and that premium can be quite steep. Most new Haswell laptops and ultrabooks cost a lot more than the average budget laptop and quite a few of them are priced north of £1,000.

“The thought that you can sell a $1,400 notebook is ridiculous. The mess is partly credited to Windows 8,” said Roger Kay, president and principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates, reports IDG News Service. “In their bones they don’t get it. They refuse to deal with the reality of what’s going on.”

Mikako Kitagawa, research analyst at Gartner, believes laptop prices have stabilized and may even creep up. PC vendors are trying to position laptops as premium products compared to tablets, which means they are more likely to focus on high-end and mid-range models, with higher margins.
This may leave more room for cheaper brands, who could focus on entry level laptops, but then again such laptops are experiencing high cannibalization rates from tablets, so the trend is a mixed bag at best. Still, someone always finds a way to make the most of a crisis and we reckon Chromebook makers could do well in such a climate.

However, things aren’t that great in the high-end, either. Now that most people are used to dirt cheap laptops and equally cheap tablets, convincing them to pay more for “premium” models won’t be easy.

Other than prestige or brand snobbery, it’s really hard to make a convincing case for high-end laptops right now. There will be no shortage of executives willing to pay £1,000 or more for a stylish piece of kit, or enthusiasts who go for even pricier, boutique offerings. However, most users will probably be better off buying a budget model for £500 and spending the rest on a tablet, or a vacant apartment complex in Spain.

Touch gambit won’t pay off for Microsoft, Intel

Posted on August 13, 2013 by - News

tablet-POS-cash-registerFor months we’ve been hearing talk of new and exciting Windows 8.x devices, with touchscreens and exciting new form factors. Now that they are slowly starting to appear, it seems that the optimism was unfounded, and that’s putting it mildly.

Although some industry leaders like Acer’s Jim Wong said touch enabled notebooks would make up about 30 to 35 percent of all shipments, IDC believes the actual figure will much lower.

“We forecast that 17 percent to 18 percent of all notebooks would have touch this year,” IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell said in a recent interview. “But that now looks to be too high, to be honest.”

O’Donnell said IDC would probably slash its estimates to between 10 percent and 15 percent of touch-enabled notebooks. NPD DisplaySearch puts the number at just 12 percent, reports Computer World.

This is very bad news for Microsoft and Intel. Users simply don’t appear to be interested in touchbooks and to be honest they shouldn’t be. Simply slapping a touchscreen on a computer with Microsoft’s user interface doesn’t transform it into an appealing tablet. Microsoft gambled on touch support in its radical UI interface in Windows 8 and the gamble didn’t pay off. Traditionalists used to the old Windows 7 layout and the Start button hated it. At the same time it didn’t manage to attract the tablet crowd.

Cost is another problem. Touch-enabled notebooks are still relatively expensive and O’Donnell believes the prices aren’t falling fast enough, as they are still in the $699 to $799 range. In other words customers are being asked to say yes to a massive premium for something they essentially don’t need and don’t really want.

O’Donnell believes it’s time for Microsoft to recognize that touchscreens don’t have the Midas touch they won’t help sell notebooks. He stressed that Microsoft has to make sure that Windows 8.x works well in a non-touch environment, as ninety percent of PCs sold this year simply won’t have touch support.

HTC enlists Iron Man to boost brand

Posted on August 12, 2013 by - News

htc-quietly-going-underHTC has enlisted the help of Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. in an effort to boost its brand. HTC has seen better days. It was a force to be reckoned with just a few years ago and since it was one of the first outfits to make great smartphones, it quickly gathered a cultish geek following.

That geeky image ended up being a bit of a problem for HTC, as the company’s phones were often associated with tech dullards who never got invited to parties. Samsung and Apple took a different, consumerish approach and it worked a lot better.

Iron Man to the rescue. Downey Jr. has signed a two year deal and he will be the face of the brand, thus helping it shake the geeky image. At least that is the plan. The slogan of HTC’s new push is “Here’s To Change,” and Downey Jr. will apparently deliver similar puns based on the HTC abbreviation in TV ads.

HTC’s marketing budget is about $1 billion per year, but the Taiwanese smartphone maker is being outspent by Samsung and Apple. HTC apparently has more than half a billion in its marketing budget left for the new Downey campaign.

In a chat with Marketing Magazine, Martin Kang, HTC’s head of marketing for EMEA, admitted that the company’s marketing could have been better.

“We’ve not been too good at promoting ourselves and we can’t be allowed to make the same mistakes,” he said. “Having this kind of asset in Robert Downey Jr. means we’re going to fire on all channels – social, TV and digital, with digital the core space.”

So what sort of HTC puns will be used in the campaign? Downey Jr. is supposed to play a high-powered and “somewhat bonkers” exec who comes up with various names using HTC as a starting point. “Hold This Cat,” “Hipster Troll Carwash” and “Happy Telephone Company.”

Although we’re by no means ad geniuses, we came up with a few of our own, designed specifically for Downey’s not so subtle off-screen persona – “Hide The Cocaine,” “Holier Than Christ” and “Heat That Crackpipe”.

Seagate intros first 3.5-inch hybrid drive

Posted on August 12, 2013 by - News, Products

seagate-longmontSeagate seems to believe in traditional desktops. The company has introduced the world’s first 3.5-inch hybrid drive in two flavours, 1TB and 2TB. Seagate has been making hybrid drives for years, but all of them were 2.5-inch models and most of them ended up in laptops.

However, the new ST1000DX001 is a big 3.5-inch desktop drive with as spindle speed of 7200rpm. Most 2.5-inch SSHDs spin at 5400rpm, so the new desktop drive should end up a bit faster. In addition, it should be cheaper than 2.5-inch drives and it’s available in 2TB, which is not the case with 2.5-inch hybrids that range from 320GB to 1TB in capacity.

The drive has an integrated 8GB NAND drive on top of 64MB of cache. Of course, it supports SATA 6Gbps and Seagate’s pitch says it delivers “SSD performance and HDD capacity”. This is pushing it to say the least. While it should end up faster than Seagate’s plain 3.5-inch drives, it won’t come close to proper SSDs in most scenarios.

However, that is beside the point. Traditional mechanical drives are on their way out and they will be replaced by hybrids. Enthusiasts and professionals will keep using SSDs are their primary drives, but for storage they’ll now be able to rely on hybrids and that sounds like a very nice mix.

The only trouble is that it’s not exactly what we’d call cheap. Early listings in Europe put it north of €110, which is quite pricey for a 3.5-inch 1TB drive, even if it is a hybrid.

Cheap smartphone shipments to skyrocket

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News

android-china-communistShipments of budget smartphones are expected to see significant growth over the next five years, a report from ABI Research has found.

Low cost smartphones are defined as smartphones with a wholesale ASP below $200 and they are making significant inroads in OEM and carrier portfolios in emerging markets.

ABI expects shipments of such frugal smartphones to reach 238 million units. However, as emerging markets start to enter the fray, shipments will hit 758 million by 2018. Smartphone penetration in emerging markets, including BRIC countries, remains relatively low, so there is plenty of room for growth.

“Despite the low cost moniker, research has shown that the feature gap between low- and high-end smartphones is decreasing, making low cost smartphones a ‘good enough’ solution for price sensitive consumers in all markets,” says senior analyst Michael Morgan.

Oddly enough, big players don’t appear to be capitalizing on the trend. Much of the growth is coming from regional and Chinese OEMs, capable of delivering dual and quad-core phones below the $200 mark. Qualcomm is practically the only big name in the mobile industry to design a series of chips and reference designs for such phones. MediaTek is taking a similar approach and it’s making big gains.

However, cheap smartphones aren’t reserved for developing countries. Although most carriers and retailers in the west tend to place an emphasis on high-end devices, many users are going after cheap smartphones.

“We are increasingly seeing low cost smartphones appear as a solution for prepaid operators in developed markets,” adds senior practice director Jeff Orr. “By 2018, ABI Research believes low cost smartphones will account for 44 percent of all smartphone shipments as the market looks to capture the next billion smartphone users.”

Low cost OEMs like Alcatel, Huawei, ZTE and CoolPad stand to make a pretty penny on the trend, along with countless white-box outfits in mainland China.

AMD Kaveri to hit channel in February

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD’s next-gen APU, codenamed Kaveri, won’t be coming to market this year. Although AMD plans to launch and ship the chip toward the end of the year, it won’t appear in the channel until February 2014.

Earlier this week tech site VR Zone  reported that Kaveri would be delayed, which was no surprise as few people expected it to show up this year. AMD’s roadmap indicates that the chip is indeed launching this year, but in its response AMD has now officially confirmed that availability is expected in early 2014.

Kaveri is AMD’s fourth generation mid-range APU. It will pack up to four Steamroller CPU cores and it will be the first AMD APU to feature GCN graphics. The previous two generations were 32nm parts based on Piledriver CPU cores and WLIW4-based GPUs, hence the 28nm Kaveri with a brand new CPU and GPU cobmo looks like a huge upgrade.

Mobile Kaveri chips should start shipping later in 2014, AMD said.

It should be noted that the new chips will require FM2+ compatible motherboards and the first boards were launched by Asus a few weeks ago. Although they are backwards compatible with FM2 parts, they don’t appear to be a worthwhile investment at this point. There is still plenty of time to stock up on FM2+ boards before Kaveri shows up.

Acer wants to grow Chromebook, Android business

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Products

acer-logo-ceAcer has committed the ultimate act of Windows heresy – it wants to expand its presence in the Chromebook and Android space. The shift was revealed by Acer president Jim Wang during the company’s latest conference call.

“We are trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible. Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets…I also see a new market there for Chromebooks,” said Wang.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wong expects Android and Chromebooks to account for 10 to 12 percent of Acer’s revenue this year. However, that figure could rise to a whopping 30 percent next year. At the moment, Chromebooks account for about three percent of Acer’s shipments.

Yesterday it emerged that Acer suffered a massive drop in EMEA shipments last quarter. It took a 44.7 percent hit compared to Q2 2012. With that in mind, it is abundantly clear why Acer is trying to tap other markets.

Over the past two years most PC makers, including Acer, tried to enter the Android tablet market and they don’t have much to show for it. Windows tablets are still dead in the water and earlier this week Acer slashed the price of its relatively new W3 Windows by 20 percent.

It appears that Chromebooks will be Acer’s next bet, as the Chromebook market is not nearly as saturated as the tablet market. However, Chromebooks also lack the mass consumer appeal of cheap and fun tablets.

Nvidia’s tablet push starts to take shape

Posted on August 9, 2013 by - News, Opinions

tegra-tabNvidia is trying to reinvent itself and make up for lost ground on the PC front with Tegra, but simply designing chips isn’t enough for the GPU maker.

Earlier this year Nvidia showed off the Phoenix, a mid-range smartphone based on the upcoming Tegra 4i. Then it introduced the Shield, a curious little device which aims to combine PC streaming and Android gaming in one package.

There has been talk of Nvidia tablets for months and even that is hardly news. Nvidia’s first crack at the tablet market came last year, but it went under the radar. Kai was the name and it was a loose reference design for cheap tablets based on the Tegra 3, much like a Nexus 7. It never took off.

Now it seems Nvidia is ready to ditch reference designs and sell tablets under its own brand and the floodgates opened. Yesterday it emerged that the company trademarked “Tegra Tab” in the US, while Fudzilla reported that a high-end tablet based on the upcoming Tegra 5 is coming in early 2014. Today a Chinese tech site leaked the first images of an actual Tegra Tab. The photos reveal a 7-inch device with stylus support, microHDMI output and a rubberized back, similar to the Nexus 7.

There is still no word on specs, availability or pricing for the device, but the leaks are shedding more light on Nvidia’s tablet push. Like most tablet makers, Nvidia appears to be gunning for two form factors, 7 inches and probably something close to 10 inches. Tegra Tab is the brand name, but we’re not sure how Nvidia plans to play it out. It’s practically certain that Nvidia will roll out tablets under its own brand, but it might offer the exact same platform, perhaps even the brand name to its hardware partners.

Nvidia decided to design and market the Shield on its own. Since it is a rather odd device which doesn’t fall into any existing category and doesn’t compete with other Tegra products, the decision made sense.

However, if Nvidia starts selling tablets based on its latest SoCs, it could irk quite a few of its clients. Tegra 3 got plenty of traction in the tablet market, but Tegra 4 won’t replicate its success. The Tegra 3 powered a bunch of Android tablets last year, including the Nexus 7 and other Asus models. It also ended up in the Surface RT, which flopped quite spectacularly.

Now that Tegra 4 tablets are few and far between, it should be a lot easier for Nvidia to come up with its own tablets without burning too many bridges. Nvidia posted some rather disappointing Tegra figures in its latest earnings report yesterday and it pinned part of the blame on the failure of Windows RT. CEO Jen Hsun Huang admitted that Tegra revenue won’t recover in the short term.

Although the market for Android tablets is booming, much of the growth appears to be coming from cheap white-box tablets. Big vendors are struggling to turn a profit on high-end Android tablets and even hot 7-inchers aren’t doing very well. Entering the Android tablet market at this point is a bit like invading Russia in November.

So what’s behind Nvidia’s decision to start building Tegra based tablets, consoles and phones? It might be strategic thinking, diversifying and going after new markets should appease investors in the short term, although it might be a while before Nvidia’s Tegra consumer hardware operations turn a profit. Nvidia is no longer in consoles, the high volume low-end graphics market is disappearing and the Tegra business should fill the gap, backed by high-end consumer GPUs and professional graphics. Nvidia could potentially start bundling Shield consoles and cheap tablets with high end cards or allowing embattled AIB partners to build tablets based on its reference designs.

The other explanation is desperation rather than long-term strategic thinking. Tegra 3 was the company’s biggest success in the SoC market to date. It ended up in the HTC One X, Nexus 7 and Surface RT, along with a bunch of other devices. Even so, it wasn’t a big seller as the combined shipments of the Nexus 7 and Surface RT are estimated at 6.5 to 8 million units, depending on who you talk to. Asus and other vendors also used the Tegra 3 in their own designs, but very few of them actually shipped. Tegra 4 was late, too big and too hot, so it scored even fewer design wins and it doesn’t power a single phone.

Even if Nvidia somehow manages to score the majority of high-end Android tablet design wins, it would not end up with impressive volumes. An HTC One or Galaxy S4 routinely outsell all high-end Android tablets combined. Meanwhile Tegra 4i won’t be ready for the next four months and even when it ships it will go after mid-range phones. Nvidia is running out of options, fast. If it doesn’t score any high-volume design wins with the Tegra 5, it might have no choice but to use its chips in its own gear.

That is not a strategy. That is doing the only thing that can be done and calling it a strategy. That is tactics.

Ultrabooks help SSD sales

Posted on August 8, 2013 by - News

ssdSolid-state drives are the new black and they are slowly starting to trickle down into mainstream PCs, thanks to cheaper Ultrabooks and increasing demand for non-enterprise drives. According to research firm IHS, SSD shipments for ultrathin notebooks and Ultrabooks totalled 5.9 million units this year, up from just 1.9 million a year ago.

SSDs are also making their first forays into the tablet sector, with shipments of 1.6 million units, up from 542,000 units last year. If demand for Windows 8 tablets and hybrids ever picks up, SSD deployment will follow suit.

Overall SSD shipments in the first quarter of 2013 amounted to 11.5 million units, up from 6 million in Q1 2012. However, it should be pointed out that IHS did not include shipments of NAND flash components for cache SSD drives and hybrid drives. In contrast, shipments of mechanical drives fell seven percent in Q1 to 135.7 million units, down from 145.5 million a year ago.

“The SSD market enjoyed big results in the first quarter as both the consumer and enterprise markets ramped up their use of machines that made use of the drives,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Most notably, SSD attach rates climbed in ultrathin/Ultrabook PCs where SSDs are the de facto storage medium, and also in PC tablets where productivity options differentiate them from media tablets.”

Things could have been even better had Ultrabook sales taken off, but demand remains relatively soft. Hybrids, or 2-in-1s are the new flavour of the day, but analysts aren’t sure they will be a big success, either.

The big winners in Q1 were Samsung, Intel, SanDisk, HGST and newcomers Seagate and LSI.

There’s gold in the used smartphone market

Posted on August 8, 2013 by - News

threeiphonesWith millions of smartphones sold each week, the market is quickly becoming saturated and upgrade cycles are likely to slow down, but while this might be bad news for phone makers and carriers, some outfits will cash in on second-hand phones.

According to research firm Sanford C. Bernstein, the global trade in used smartphones might be the next big thing.

“Our analysis suggests that the used smartphone market is poised to explode – we estimate that the market will grow from 53 million to 257 million units over the next 5 years,” said Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford C. Bernstein. “By 2018, we estimate that used phones will cannibalise eight percent of total new smartphone sales, up from three percent in 2012.”

The percentages don’t sound very impressive, but the unit volume does. At the moment, most used phones are collected in the US and sold in emerging markets. Apple’s iPhones are particularly hot and there is plenty of demand in emerging markets, as many customers simply can’t afford new iPhones – and even older models are status symbols in less affluent markets.

Sacconaghi found that iPhones see a lot less depreciation than Samsung’s Galaxy S series phones. Even broken iPhones are selling, which isn’t the case with other brands. Carriers are also joining the fun and they are offering trade-in programmes that actually pay more for phones locked to a competitor’s network. In some cases, US carriers are willing to pay twice as much to get their hands on a phone locked to a competitor’s network.

Piper Jaffray analyst and Apple guru Gene Munster also concluded that iPhones have better resale values that Galaxy phones.

Apple’s build quality is second to none, so most iPhones stand up to punishment better than plasticky Samsungs. Brand snobbery is another factor, but Samsung has some trump cards as well. Galaxies have an easily replacable back cover and a user-replacable battery, which is not the case with iPhones.

Apple is reportedly mulling a trade-in programme of its own, through its stores, reports Forbes.

PC gaming hardware bucks negative trend

Posted on August 8, 2013 by - News, Opinions

gamer-sexAlthough the PC market is going through a rough patch, sales of gaming hardware seem to be weathering the storm quite well. Hardcore gamers are enthusiasts, they can’t trade in their beloved desktops for laptops, let alone tablets. Even console gaming is frowned upon in many circles.

As a result, gamers are continuing to spend and upgrade their high-end PCs. Jon Peddie Research found that sales of gaming hardware will continue to grow and at a CAGR of 3 percent over the next three years. Sales slumped this year and they are expected to hit $18.3 billion. By 2016, however, JPR reckons they will reach $20.7 billion.

Jon Peddie, President of JPR said “Not only is gaming becoming an even more important purchasing influence of PC sales due to the offloading of more basic functionality to smart devices, but we are forecasting growth in the most expensive discrete graphics products. We are also impressed with the embedded graphics offerings this generation and going forward.”

Analyst Ted Pollak also pointed out that many new games are placing increasing demands on the CPU, hence swapping out the graphics card doesn’t do the trick anymore – gamers have to upgrade their CPUs as well. In many cases this means they have to replace the motherboard as well, while investments in additional components such as faster memory and power supply units are not uncommon in such scenarios.

JPR believes that traditional PCs have an advantage in casual gaming as x86 tablets expand the market, and new powerful CPUs with built-in graphics have opened the door to the living room. Nothing can surpass PCs at this point in time because they can run ultra high resolution graphics better than any other platform. Sadly though, 4K or UHD monitors and TVs are still years away from going mainstream, as they could generate even more demand for high-end GPUs and CPUs.

However, although JPR’s forecast is good news for many vendors, we have some long-term concerns.

PC gaming doesn’t come cheap and with record youth unemployment and very little in the way of disposable income, high-end gaming PCs are simply out of reach for many potential buyers. AAA titles don’t come cheap, either. Furthermore most gamers grew up with PCs and they developed a love for tinkering and hardware at a very young age. Now that most kids’ first contact with computers comes in the form of tablets, smartphones and consoles, it will be increasingly difficult to recruit new PC gamers.

In addition, the pace of hardware development in the PC industry is slowing. While we see twofold performance improvements with each generation of ARM-based SoCs, big GPUs and CPUs used in high-end PCs simply can’t deliver such boosts and the performance difference between subsequent generations is narrowing. This trend is here to stay, due to technical limitations, but development of ARM chips is also likely to slow down, as they hit the thermal barrier. Cloud gaming and streaming are also potential threats. A few years down the road gamers might be leasing processing power and streaming games to any screen they want, which would be very bad news for some vendors. Luckily, that won’t happen anytime soon.

European PC market falls 20 percent in Q2

Posted on August 8, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpThe European PC market may be about to bottom out, but before it does several vendors will take massive hits,  research from Gartner reveals. PC shipments in Western Europe totalled just 10.9 million units last quarter, down 19.8 percent year-on-year.

Gartner concluded that the death of netbook PCs, inventory woes caused by the transition to Haswell and Windows 8.1 all played a role in the decline. Acer and Asus were particularly hard hit. Acer’s sales were down 44.7 percent, while Asus took a 41.7 percent plunge. Acer sold just 1.3 million boxes in Q2, down from 2.36 million in the same quarter last year. It faired a bit better in Britain, with a 21.4 percent drop. Asus managed 850,000 units, down from 1.45 million last year.

HP still leads the way with 2.28 million units and a 20.8 percent market share. Unlike Acer and Asus, it managed to maintain its market share, but overall shipments were down 17.4 percent compared to a year ago. Lenovo was the only big vendor to end the quarter on a positive note. It shipped 1.26 million units, up from 1.185 million last year. That was enough to boost its market share from 7.8 to 11.5 percent.

Dell also did relatively well. Although its shipments were down 1.1 percent to 1.17 million units, Dell upped its market share from 8.7 percent to 10.7 percent.

gartner-UKPC-2Q13

Although all segments of the PC market declined, notebook sales saw a 23.9 percent drop, while desktop sales declined 12.2 percent. The consumer market saw a 25.8 percent dip, while sales of professional rigs were down 13.5 percent.

Gartner concluded that the UK mobile PC market lost 25 percent of its volume since 2010. PC shipments in Blighty totalled 2.2 percent units in Q1, down 13 percent from Q1 2012.

“The second quarter marked the 11th consecutive quarter of decline in the U.K.,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “During this time the notebook market has shrunk nearly 25 percent in unit volume. The U.K. notebook market totaled over 2 million units in the second quarter of 2010 and has now reached just under 1.5 million units.”

Atwal said PC vendors are now at a “make or break point” in the industry, as the product move to new hardware and Windows 8.1 could turn things around. He also pointed out that the professional market did a lot better than the consumer market.

However, it looks like things will get worse before they get better.

Lenovo gains on Apple – report

Posted on August 7, 2013 by - News

pc-sales-slumpMore good news for Lenovo. According to a company called Canalys, Apple has lost ground to Lenovo on the back of lacklustre iPad sales in Q2.

It is worth noting that Canalys includes tablets in its quarterly PC market reports. Therefore it found that Android now has a 17 percent share in the PC market.

Although tablet sales appear to be slowing down while some people wait for new fruity toys “Designed in California”, Canalys reckons tablets will outsell notebooks by the fourth quarter of 2013. This is in line with previous reports from other research firms.

PC shipments in EMEA fell  year-on-year in Q2, the first decline after two successive quarters of double-digit growth. Western Europe was down 10 percent, while Central and Eastern Europe took a three  percent plunge.

canalys-PCreport-Q213

Demand for smartphones and tablets is increasing around the world. However, faced by a changing industry, channel partners are exercising caution when planning and placing orders. Apple kept the lead in Q2, with 18.6 million units shipped and a 17.1 percent market share. However, it lost two percent from Q2 2012. Lenovo upped its share to 12.9 percent and shipped 14.1 million units. HP lost share and volume and it’s in third spot with 12.7 million units and an 11.6 percent share.

It should be noted that desktop and notebook shipments accounted for about 20 percent of Apple’s total shipments. Samsung also made its way into the top five, with 10.8 million units and a 9.9 percent share, but, like Apple, most of its shipments were tablets, not proper PCs.

Canalys found that most vendors are seeing increased tablet volumes, but that won’t help traditional PC outfits. Volumes are one thing, but most tablets coming out of Lenovo, HP and the rest of the PC gang are on the cheap side, with relatively low ASPs.