Don't Look Now, but the PC Market Is Going South Again

Just when it seemed that the worst might be over for the global market for personal computers, new numbers out today from the research firms Gartner and IDC suggest otherwise.

Worldwide shipments totaled 68.5 million during the first quarter of the year, down 6.7 percent from the first quarter of 2014, according to IDC. Gartner reported a smaller year-on-year decline of 5.2 percent to 71.7 million units. (The two firms count differently: IDC includes Chromebooks, for example, while Gartner excludes them.)

Both agreed that Lenovo remained the top vendor in the world. Gartner pegged its share of the market at 17 percent, one point ahead of Hewlett-Packard. IDC had the race between them much closer, assigning Lenovo a 17.6 percent share and 17.1 to HP. Dell, Acer and Asus all saw their market shares fall in both reports.

HP dominated the U.S. market with about a 25 percent share in both reports, while Dell was a close second. Apple was third in the Gartner report, with a 10.9 percent share, slightly ahead of Lenovo. IDC put Apple in fourth place and only slightly behind Lenovo. Overall the U.S. market declined by 1.3 percent.

Last year PC sales showed signs of slowing a precipitous decline that started in 2013, which still stands as the industry’s worst year since records have been kept.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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