PC Shipments See Some Respite in the US as Global Downtrend Continues

According to latest reports by research firms Gartner and IDC, PC shipments have finally seen an upward trend in the US for the very first time in over a year during the second quarter of 2016. According to the report by Gartner, which included Windows tablet shipments, PC shipments grew by 1.4 percent in the second quarter while IDC reported a 4.9 percent rise in PC shipments, without including the Windows tablets.

IDC attributed the strength of US dollar and relative market stability in the region to be a major reason behind the improvement in PC sales. "As expected, the start of the peak education buying season helped generate large Chromebook shipment volumes in the US," IDC's Devices & Displays Research Director Linn Huang was quoted as saying in the release.

In its report, Gartner said that all regions except North America experienced a decline in PC shipments and that the Latin America region was still very weak largely because of political and economic instability.

IDC pointed out that both Lenovo and Acer saw strong growth during the period and in fact ended up outpacing the market leaders HP and Dell. "Despite uncertainty in various parts of the market, the competitive environment, strength of the US compared to other markets, strong gains in Chrome shipments, and a relatively easy comparison to year-ago shipments contributed to year-on-year growth of almost 5 percent," the firm added.

According to IDC, Lenovo continued to be the worldwide market-leader in the second quarter of 2016, while in the US HP became the leader for PC shipments, trailed by Dell. While Gartner maintains Lenovo to be the global leader in PC shipments, it says Dell was the leader of the US market in Q2 2016, followed by HP.