IDC released figures estimating that worldwide PC shipments accounted for 81.6 million units in Q3 of 2013 – that’s a drop of 7.6 percent, compared to the previous year.
But IDC said it had expected a decline of 9.5 percent for the quarter. It said that shipments were weak in the early part of the quarter but business buys and channel intake of Windows 8.1 based systems happened in September.
IDC said emerging markets continued to be weak, while the channel and vendors were stock heavy on Ivy Bridge systems and eroded by lower priced smartphones and tablets.
Upgrades from Windows XP boosted shipments in the enterprise desktop section.
Rajani Singh, senior research analyst at IDC, said that the US market hasn’t changed that much. There may be a small increase in the fourth quarter, he said. But that will be followed “by a challenging 2014”.
In EMEA the PC market continued to decline with weak consumer demand a shift to tablets. The channel maintained lean inventories during the period.
The only bright light were “pockets of investments” despite companies still being reluctant to spend any money.
Lenovo is the top vendor and is expanding into the channel, while HP and Dell were numbers two and three. Acer and Asus both were weakened by lack of spend by consumers. Asus doesn’t have a significant corporate user base.
