Tablets and smartphones continued to eat away at worldwide PC shipments, which remained flat during the second quarter, according to research released by Gartner on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Lenovo inched closer to taking the top spot in PC shipments from Hewlett-Packard, which barely held on to the title of world's largest PC maker. Lenovo has been growing through acquisitions and aggressive pricing, Gartner said.
Worldwide PC shipments for all vendors totalled 87.5 million units, a decline of 0.1% compared to the same quarter last year, Gartner said.
Consumers are spending less on PCs and more on smartphones and tablets, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement. The trend is more pronounced in developed countries where the PC market is highly saturated, he said.
Research firm IDC on Wednesday also reported a year-over-year decline of 0.1% in worldwide PC shipments, a turnaround from its forecast in May of 2.1% growth.
A slowing economy in China also hurt PC shipments, the research firms said.
Shipments in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) beat the trend, growing 1.9%.
The slowdown has hurt chip makers as well as PC makers. Advanced Micro Devices reduced its revenue expectations earlier this week on poor consumer spending and weak sales in China and Europe. The company said its OEM business underperformed, indicating that PC makers bought fewer chips than expected.
Intel is making a push to revitalise PC shipments with ultrabooks, and has poured millions into developing and promoting them, but so far they have failed to reignite laptop shipments.
But the second-quarter slowdown does not bode well for ultrabooks, nor Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 OS, due later this year, Gartner said.
HP shipped 13 million PCs in the quarter, a drop of 12.1%, giving it a 14.9% market share. Second-placed Lenovo grew its shipments by 14.9% to 12.8 million units, giving the Chinese PC maker a 14.7% market share.
Acer took the third spot with 11% market share and shipments of 9.6 million units, up 3.6%. Dell's shipments fell by 11.5%, putting it in fourth place ahead of Asus.
IDG News Service