The industry’s major suppliers have been hit by component shortages which will bedevil the industry for at least another year.
Beancounters at Gartner have been adding up numbers and dividing by their shoe size and reached the conclusion that a scarcity of DRAM components, has put a hole in the PC profits of major vendors including Dell EMC.
Things got worse in the third quarter of 2017 when compared with the first half of the year.
Big G principle number cruncher Mika Kitagawa said: “The component price hike affected the consumer PC market as most vendors generally pass the price hike on to consumers, rather than absorbing the cost themselves.”
“We expect the DRAM shortage to continue to the end of 2018, but it will not be reflected in the final PC prices immediately.”
Worldwide PC shipments reached 67 million units in the third quarter of 2017, 2.6 percent down on the corresponding quarter last year, marking the twelfth consecutive quarter of declining PC shipments, Gartner said..
Windows 10 upgrades continued to feed PC demand among business, Gartner said, but refresh cycles have varied from region to region.
“Business PC demand, led by Windows 10 upgrades, continued to drive PC shipments across all regions, but its refresh schedule varies by region. The countries with stable economies, such as the US, have created a positive sentiment among businesses, especially for SMBs, which are more vulnerable to external events such as economic or political [ones]”, said Kitagawa.
The PC market stabilised in EMEA, Japan and Latin America, but the US market experienced a 10 percent year-on-year decline after a “very weak” back-to-school sales season.
