PC Sales Grew Slightly in Second Quarter

Mirroring the same quarter last year, PC sales in the quarter ending June 30 grew 3.2 percent to 64 million units. PC makers old 62 million units in Q2 2018.

As always, these numbers are averaged from estimates provided by Gartner and IDC.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

“Worldwide PC shipments growth was driven by demand from the Windows 10 refresh in the business market in the second quarter of 2019,” Gartner senior principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a prepared statement. “Desktop PC growth was strong, which offset a decline in mobile PC shipments.”

“The threat of increased tariffs led some PC makers to ship a surplus of desktops and notebooks, thereby artificially propping up the PC market during the second quarter,” IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani added, putting an asterisk on the quarter. “The market has entered the last leg of the Windows 7 to Windows 10 commercial migrations. However, the closing sprint is unlikely to generate the spike seen when Windows XP met its [end of support] because we are further ahead of the migration with two quarters to go.”

Both firms referenced the mythical Intel CPU shortage, noting that it had “improved markedly,” in IDC’s words. “The shortage mainly impacted small and midsize vendors as large vendors took advantage and continued to grow, taking market share away from the smaller vendors that struggled to secure CPUs,” Gartner said.

Lenovo remained the world’s biggest maker of PCs, selling 16 million units, good for 25 percent market share. HP was again number two, with 14.7 million units.  Dell (11.1 million units), Apple (3.9 million), and Acer (3.8 million) rounded out the top five.

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 13 comments

  • beckerrt

    Premium Member
    12 July, 2019 - 9:42 am

    <p>If this Intel shortage is real, shouldn't AMD be increasing shipments in response? Haven't heard of them picking up any market share though. </p>

    • coeus89

      12 July, 2019 - 11:28 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#441427">In reply to beckerrt:</a></em></blockquote><p>AMD has been benefiting from a myriad of Intel problems. They have gained market share across the board in the past two or so years. Though, if a computer was designed to use an Intel part, it is not trivial to drop in an AMD part on short notice. Especially for laptops. I bet vendors will be re-evaluating their total dependence on Intel CPUs for future products.</p>

      • jimchamplin

        Premium Member
        12 July, 2019 - 5:15 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#441449">In reply to coeus89:</a></em></blockquote><p>AMD would be smart to ship a drop-in replacement if at all feasible. </p>

  • Sprtfan

    12 July, 2019 - 10:45 am

    <p>I know Paul doesn't believe it, but we tried to order batch of computers several months ago at work and were told it would take several months to fill due to component shortages. </p>

  • dontbe evil

    12 July, 2019 - 10:56 am

    <p>but but nobody wants a pc, nobody wants windows 10, everybody wants a tablet… what? tablet sales decreased? </p>

  • hoomgar

    12 July, 2019 - 11:44 am

    <p>Paul, I like that you used a TC for the picture. This article was refreshing. The PC is a long way from dead. It's just morphing.</p>

    • ErichK

      Premium Member
      12 July, 2019 - 1:29 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#441453">In reply to Hoomgar:</a></em></blockquote><p>I actually really like the style of that case.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    12 July, 2019 - 5:32 pm

    <p><em>PC makers old 62 million units in Q2 2018.</em></p><p>I'm really beginning to question the efficacy of Grammarly or claims that any of the authors here use it.</p>

  • warren

    12 July, 2019 - 6:22 pm

    <p>3.9 million is another setback for Apple. They were at 4.8 million for the same quarter four years ago.</p>

    • skane2600

      12 July, 2019 - 8:03 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#441867">In reply to warren:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yes, and PCs sold an order of magnitude better. Of course Apple put most of it's eggs in the iOS basket so it's not surprising their traditional products suffered.</p>

      • MikeGalos

        12 July, 2019 - 9:56 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#441953">In reply to skane2600:</a></em></blockquote><p>They actually believed their own "Post-PC Era" marketing meme.</p><p>But that does give them 6.09% of the market. That's still a lot better than the 2.47% they had the last time the Macintosh almost died under Gil Amelio. </p>

  • waethorn

    14 July, 2019 - 4:05 pm

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Both firms referenced the mythical Intel CPU shortage"</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">MYTHICAL?! It was a well-known truth. Intel even announced to OEM's not expect low-end CPU's – they backed off manufacturing of Gemini and Apollo Lake CPU's and hoarded new 9000-series and charged a premium on 8000-series to sell off old quantities of 7000 series that nobody wanted (because the 8th gen had more cores in almost all cases).</span></p>

    • solomonrex

      16 July, 2019 - 8:53 am

      <blockquote><a href="#442513"><em>In reply to Waethorn:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote>If Intel is withholding chips, then that would confirm that the shortage is 'mythical', wouldn't it?</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote>A true shortage would mean that laptops would be in demand and wouldn't go on fire sales constantly. It would mean that AMD could charge more, because Intel chips wouldn't be available. It would mean rising prices. None of that happened. Dell still sells cheap Latitudes, cheap chromebooks still have intel, AMD is still undercutting Intel and Surface still goes on sale every other week. AND, in fact, for the first time ever, all-new MacBook Airs were broadly available ON SALE their first week of release.</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote>There's no genuine shortage, just monopolistic manipulation.</blockquote><p><br></p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC