PC market stuck in 18-month rut due to weak demand and shifting budget priorities

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The worldwide PC downturn continued in the second quarter as global shipments dipped 13.4 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. A preliminary report from International Data Corporation (IDC) pointed to weak demand from consumers and commercial clients, continued macroeconomic headwinds, and a shift in IT budgets as factors that have contributed to the 18-month slump the industry is currently in.

IDC said the downturn has caused elevated inventory levels for longer than anticipated, and that no PC maker has been immune. Among leading computer markers, Apple and HP were the only ones that didn't experience double-digit declines during the second quarter.

Mac shipments increased 10.3 percent year-over-year, due in part to supply issues Cupertino experienced in 2022. HP, meanwhile, saw shipment declines narrow to 0.8 percent compared to Q2 2022 as its inventory has finally started normalizing.

As for raw numbers, Lenovo led the way with 14.2 million PCs shipped in the quarter followed by HP at 13.4 million and Dell with 10.3 million units shipped. Apple finished fourth with 5.3 million Macs shipped and Acer rounded out the top five with four million shipments. All others combined for 14.4 million shipments. In total, 61.6 million PCs were shipped during the quarter compared to 71.1 million units shipped in the second quarter of last year.

Ryan Reith, group vice president for IDC's client device trackers, said the roller coaster of supply and demand the industry has faced over the past five years has been extremely challenging. On one hand, companies don't want to be caught with short supply like what happened in 2020. Conversely, many are hesitant to make a big bet on a market rebound at this stage.

Reith said IDC is seeing signs of a return to pre-pandemic consumer habits where computing needs are shared across multiple platforms. As such, the firm expects spending to favor smartphones over PCs. On the commercial side, continued workforce reduction and the growth of generative AI is only creating more confusion for CFOs working on budgets.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/99356-pc-market-stuck-18-month-rut-due-weak.html

 

[loki1944]

NSS.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

All those words translated: "We ar eina recession but we wont admit it".

Also:

"Reith said IDC is seeing signs of a return to pre-pandemic consumer habits where computing needs are shared across multiple platforms. As such, the firm expects spending to favor smartphones over PCs."

There it is, pure AAA grade copium! I guess Reith forgot to check if smartphone sales have also been trending downwards......oh wait, they absolutely are!

 

[veLa]

A lot of the growth in 2020 and 2021 was when covid meant a lot of people were working from home.

 

[RandomWAN]

"...18-month slump the industry is currently in."

Artificial bubbles bursting is not a slump. The market normalized.

 

[Julnor]

"...18-month slump the industry is currently in."

Artificial bubbles bursting is not a slump. The market normalized.

Oh it's got a ways more to go. GPU prices look to be the last to fall but they're going to come down more.

 

[godrilla]

Oh it's got a ways more to go. GPU prices look to be the last to fall but they're going to come down more.

7900xt and xtx already fell by around 20% below launch priced MSRP and now all AMD flagship hardware include a copy of Starfield.

https://shop-us-en.amd.com/amd-starfield-game-bundle/

Remember the more the analysts cry the more gamers win!

Crying about 13.4% drop in revenue year over year that grew exponentially just a few years back. What is being offered to curb the revenue loss? Stagnation of 8 gigs of vram, 8 cpu cores and bad PC ports galore. They aren't even trying they are deliberately assisting the PC market imo from all sides. Even Display Port 2.1 standard monitors are delayed, what happened to all those 8k Samsung monitors AMD took significant amount of time from presentation talking about?

 

[Uncle Al]

It's just another business trend and nothing more, at this point its hardly news .....

 

[Benchsalyst]

No joke ? Because of consumers priorities ? Nice to avoid to say prices who are deliberately hight on purpose , not respecting normal market laws . It is a general ( all markets ) practice at the moment , but as long as there will some as nvid iots ( exemples ) able to buy a card 300-500$ more expansive than it would be , the prices will stay high . Moore is dead at the begining of his law death and maybe just before reducing components size race is over or have a big brake .

 

[Benchsalyst]

Look at the SSD lower at 260€ 4TB? 7300 MB/s , I think it is due to demand , or their prices would have stayed very high a long time again .