Beancounters at analyst outfit Canalys showed that Lenovo is the supreme ruler of the PC market, followed by HP and Dell.But the analyst has warned market factors are sustaining a short-term boost that could wear off as early as Q1 2020.The end of Windows 7 support in January next year and the ongoing migration to Windows 10 is one of the current factors, along with seasonal inventory stocking ahead of the key Q4 holiday season, the outfit said.
Europe was hit by the Brexit effect with the ongoing political uncertainty being blamed for customers showing caution about hardware investments. As a result shipments came in at two percent in EMEA for Q3, which was below the global average. Apple was the only vendor to see increases in the region.
Rushabh Doshi, research director of Canalys’ mobility services said: “The PC market high is refreshing. However, there is a limit to how quickly leading vendors can ramp production. Intel remains a key bottleneck, with pressure on its 14nm CPU supply not likely to see improvement until Q1 2020. However, the Intel CPU shortage provided leading PC vendors an advantage over smaller rivals drove HP and Lenovo to their best Q3 performance to-date.
“Going forward, leading vendors will have an opportunity to further consolidate the market and squeeze smaller vendors’ market share, if the Intel supply is not able to satisfy the spike in orders.”
At the same time research from Context showed that consumers were driving demand for another hardware category, premium monitors, with home office users, gamers and creatives some of the key buyers.
Sales of monitors across Western Europe through consumer channels, retail and etail, continued to grow and were up by fore per cent year-on-year in August.
