The PC market stumbled in the final quarter of 2008, and may even have declined compared with the same quarter last year, according to the latest estimated figures. Since sales are tracked in units, the financial position must be even worse: a £250 netbook counts the same as a £1,500 MacBook, but the profit margin is much lower.
According to Gartner, the worldwide PC industry suffered its worst growth rate since 2002, with fourth quarter shipments rising just 1.1% to 78.1 million units. Over the full year, however, shipments grew by 10.9% to 302.2m units.
IDC's numbers were even worse: it had fourth quarter shipments falling by 0.4% to 77m units.
In the full year, Gartner says Hewlett-Packard increased its lead as the world's top PC manufacturer, shipping 55.7m units for an 18.4% market share. HP was followed by Dell (43.1m), Acer, (33.5m), Lenovo (21.9m) and Toshiba (13.5m). Acer's unit shipments grew by 26.5%, thanks to the success of its Acer Aspire One netbook.
IDC commented:
Low-cost portables, vendor competition, and holiday promotions were simply not enough to overcome the economic tide, even with the market for mini notebooks (also known as netbooks) taking off. Growth of portable PCs was cut roughly in half from nearly 40% year on year in the first three quarters of 2008 to roughly 20% in the fourth quarter.
The US market was weak in the fourth quarter, with sales down by 10.1% to 15.6m units, on Gartner's numbers. However, Acer's shipments jumped 55.4%, which enabled the company to overtake Apple.
Gartner reckons the top 5 in the US in Q4 were Dell (4.5m units), HP (4.4m), Acer (2.4m), Apple (1.2m) and Toshiba (1.0m). IDC has the same companies in the same order, but credits Acer with fewer sales (2.1m).
Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group, said:
"In the fourth quarter, US businesses quickly cut IT spending with public sectors, including some government and education buyers, postponed PC procurement due to budget crisis concerns. PC vendors focused on the professional market were especially hit by the weakening market conditions. Overall, consumer mobile PC shipments showed strength, but the shipment growth was boosted by steep ASP [average selling price] declines which were further accelerated by the popularity of mini-notebooks."
The slowdown in government and business sales obviously hit Dell, which is now only just ahead of HP in the US market.
Over the full year, IDC reckons Dell had US sales of 20.3m units for a 29.5% market share, followed by HP (17.1m), Acer (6.3m), Apple (5.3m) and Toshiba (2.8m). Total sales came to 68.7m units, giving Apple a US market share of 7.7%, up from 6.2% last year. But it was overtaken by Acer, which grew its unit sales by 62.1%.
