Q1 PC Sales See Biggest Drop Ever

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Two of the biggest research firms covering the technology industry—IDC and Gartner—have released grim reports about the state of the PC market. It appears that sales of new PCs showed the biggest decrease ever in the first quarter on 2013.

Nick Wingfield with The New York Times reported, “On Wednesday, the research firm IDC reported that worldwide PC shipments declined 13.9 percent during the first three months of the year compared with the same period a year earlier. To put those numbers into perspective, that is the most severe decline in the PC market since IDC began tracking the business almost two decades ago and almost double the rate of decline that the firm was expecting for the quarter.”

Dan Nakaso with MercuryNews.com added, “Gartner, which uses different methodology from IDC, said it was the first time that PC shipments fell below 80 million units since the second quarter of 2009. But there was some good news in the Gartner report. Without citing numbers, Gartner said that PC business sales actually increased, but were dragged down by lousy consumer PC sales.”

Nathan Eddy with eWeek noted, “In the first quarter of 2013, global PC shipments went below 80 million units for the first time since the second quarter of 2009, and all regions showed a decrease in shipments, with the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region experiencing the steepest decline, according to a report by IT research firm Gartner. The figure represented the fourth consecutive quarter that showed a drop in worldwide PC shipments, as worldwide PC shipments totaled 79.2 million units, a 11.2 percent decline from the first quarter of 2012. HP and Lenovo were in a virtual tie for the top position in the first quarter of 2013, however HP recorded its worst shipment decline since the acquisition of Compaq in 2003.”

All Things D’s Arik Hesseldahl observed, “By all indications, it’s going to be a rough day on the stock market for any company exposed to the personal computer business…. With a few minutes to go before the opening of markets in New York, shares of market leader Hewlett-Packard were down by nearly 6 percent. Dell, still the subject of an ongoing fight over its proposed $24.4 billion plan to go private in a leveraged buyout transaction, was down only slightly. Chipmaker Intel was down nearly 3 percent. Advanced Micro Devices, Intel’s one remaining rival, was down 2.7 percent. Microsoft, the primary supplier of operating system software to the world’s PCs, was down 3.5 percent.”