Shipments of Personal Computers worldwide fell during the most recent third quarter, reaching the lowest level for that period since 2008. Industry experts blamed the drop on low demand from returning students.
This marks the sixth straight quarterly drop, with global units falling 8.6% to only 80.3 million. In the U.S., there was growth as shipments were up by 3.5%, which helped to compensate for the weak volume across other regions, said industry experts.
Lenovo Groups held onto the No. 1 place in the global market, followed in second by Hewlett-Packard, which was the leader in the U.S. Makers of PCs have not launched new products that have been capable of winning consumers back who have little by little migrated to less expensive tablets to surf the Internet. The demand by consumers usually rises during the third quarter, boosted by purchases for back to school.
Purchases made by businesses and an increase from an update by Microsoft’s Windows 8 OP accounted for the decline that was smaller than expected, IDS said.
Lenovo, based in Beijing, has a market share of 17.6% globally, which was helped by an increase of 2.8% in unit shipments.
The No. 2 spot was held onto by HP after it gained 1.5% for the quarter, giving it a share of 17.1%. Third place went to Dell, Inc with a share of 11.6%, which was a 1% increase in shipments. Acer, Inc and Asustek Computer, both based in Taiwan posted declines in shipments of over 20%, said researchers.
