Global PC shipments fall 10 percent in 2013, Lenovo retains lead: Gartner, IDC

Shipments reached 82.2 million personal computers in October-December, 5.6 percent less than in the same period a year earlier and the seventh consecutive quarter of decline.

"The PC market again came in very close to expectations, but unfortunately failed to significantly change the trajectory of growth," said Loren Loverde, a vice president at IDC, in the market researcher's latest global PC shipment report released Friday.

China's Lenovo Group Ltd held its lead over the U.S.'s Hewlett-Packard Co as the world's biggest maker by shipments, with a market share of 17.1 percent for 2013 compared with HP's 16.6 percent.

Dell was the third-largest PC maker by shipments last year with a 12 percent market share.

Both Lenovo and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd experienced strong growth in the U.S., in part because of the success of low-cost Chromebooks, which use Google Inc's Chrome operating system.

Troubled Taiwanese makers Asustek Computer Inc and Acer Inc saw steep drop-offs in shipment levels in 2013, falling 19.6 percent and 28.5 percent globally, according to IDC.

A Gartner report in the meanwhile says personal computer sales slipped even further during the holiday shopping season, capping the worst annual decline in the PC industry's history.

The research firm Gartner estimates worldwide PC shipments for the three months ending in December dropped 7 percent from the same time in 2012. It marks the seventh consecutive quarter of decreasing PC sales.

Gartner agrees with IDC's estimates, saying that for all of last year, PC sales plunged 10 percent. Shipments of desktop and laptop computers have never tumbled so dramatically. The numbers released Thursday show annual PC shipments have now backtracked to where they stood in 2009.

The PC slump is driven by the growing popularity of less expensive and more convenient mobile devices controlled by touch-screen technology instead of keyboards and computer mice.

Notably, earlier in January, one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world, Taiwanese firm Acer, said that due to slowing PC sales, it was looking to other avenues, such as e-commerce, to boost bottom-lines.

"Under the ICT industry's paradigm shift Acer is going beyond hardware-based thinking; the investment in e-commerce and our self-built cloud (Build Your Own Cloud, 'BYOC') is our important deployment of 'hardware + software + services' transformation," Acer Chairman and company founder Stan Shih had said after the announced the acquisition of a 15.6 percent stake in a PChome subsidiary, PChomePay.