Worldwide PC shipments totalled 60.6 million units in the second quarter (Q2) of 2024, a 1.9% increase from the second quarter of 2023, according to preliminary results by Gartner. This marks three consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth for the PC market. 

 

“The low year-on-year growth, together with stabilised sequential growth, indicates that the market is on the right track to recovery,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Director Analyst at Gartner. “With 7.8% sequential growth between 1Q24 and 2Q24, PC inventory is tracking back to an average level. We continue to see no major supply chain issues, allowing for the market to be perfectly set up for continued growth with major platform updates on the horizon.” 

 

Meanwhile, the EMEA PC market experienced its third consecutive quarter of growth, registering a 4.8% increase compared to the same period last year. However, the quarter-over-quarter unit volumes remained relatively stable, with a marginal growth of 0.4%. 

 

Market stabilising

“The most recent EMEA data suggests that the market is stabilising from previous declines and returning to its seasonal trends, rather than experiencing a significant surge,” said Kitagawa. 

 

There were no changes in the top six vendor rankings compared to the second quarter of 2023. All top six vendors had a positive quarter with year-over-year growth except Dell.

 

Regional overview 

The US PC market saw the highest shipment volume since the third quarter of 2022, with over 18 million PCs shipped resulting in 3.4% year-over-year growth.  

 

“The second quarter in the US typically shows growth that is derived from the high sales season in government and education,” said Kitagawa. “Business PC demand picked up slowly as well, contributing to this growth. Our current expectation is to see surging business PC demand in the US in the second half of 2024.”

 

HP maintained the top spot in the US PC market based on shipments with 27% market share. Dell followed with 25.2% market share.

 

The Asia/Pacific market declined 2.2% year-over-year, a less steep decline than the past few quarters. The decline was due to the weak China market, offsetting the growth in mature and emerging Asia/Pacific. Emerging Asia/Pacific continued to see mid-single-digit growth, led by healthy growth in India. Mature Asia Pacific also saw improving PC demand, resulting in year-over-year growth for the first time in two years. 

 

Industry pushes AI PCs

From the beginning of 2024, the PC industry has been making significant efforts to promote the AI PC category, a device with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). At the end of the second quarter of 2024, the first Arm-based Windows AI PC was introduced. The release is expected to intensify competition in the PC market, potentially opening up more opportunities for Arm processors on Windows devices. 

 

“Despite these market efforts, the demand for AI PCs has been slow, as the product is still in the early introduction stage, and the real benefits of owning such a device are not yet clear to most buyers,” said Kitagawa.--TradeArabia News Service