Lenovo Named No. 1 PC Maker

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Both Gartner and IDC agree that China’s Lenovo sold more PCs than any other manufacturer during the second quarter of the year, toppling HP from its throne. Meanwhile, PC sales declined for the fifth quarter in a row, the longest such slump in history.

Noel Randewich and Lee Chyen Yee with Reuters reported, “China’s Lenovo Group Ltd unseated Hewlett-Packard as the world’s top PC maker in the latest quarter – a quarter which saw global shipments tumble 11 percent from a year earlier due to spectacular growth in tablets and smartphones. It was the fifth straight quarter of decline and analysts expect PC shipments to continue to fall, albeit at a slower pace as companies upgrade to Windows 8 and buy laptops that can be separated from keyboards to become tablets.”

Mashable’s Stan Schroeder noted, “This is not the first time Lenovo has surpassed Hewlett-Packard. According to Gartner’s report from October 2012, Lenovo has been the no. 1 PC maker in the third quarter of 2012. Back then, IDC’s numbers weren’t backing up that claim, but now both analyst firms have Lenovo at the top.”

All Things D’s Arik Hesseldahl explained, “So here’s the rundown: Gartner shows Lenovo selling slightly less than 12.7 million PCs, just a few hundred thousand more than HP at 12.4 million, giving them both a share of about 16 percent and change, meaning they divided up about a third of the total of 76 million between them during the quarter. HP saw its shipments fall by almost five percent versus the year-ago quarter. Lenovo’s shipments declined fractionally. For its part, Dell was in third place globally, shipping slightly fewer than 9 million, down about four percent. Acer and Asus were fourth and fifth, declining by 35 percent and 20 percent respectively.”

InfoWorld’s Martyn Williams added, “Looking ahead, IDC expects the rate of decline to slow but doesn’t expect shipments to increase again until at least 2015. ‘There’s been a lot going on,’ said Loren Loverde, vice president of PC tracker research at IDC, in a telephone interview. ‘Economic weakness has continued in Europe, it’s worsening in Asia and not making much progress in the U.S. The good news is that the U.S. has improved quite a bit,’ he said.