Australian PC shipments decline again as monitors surge

Australian PC shipments declined once again in the fourth quarter of 2018, while PC monitor shipments have reached a ten-year high.

So says the latest release of research by analyst firm IDC.

The bad news: Australia’s PC shipments declined 2.5 percent year over year in Q4 2018, compared to an increase of 9.6 percent in Q3 and 8.9 percent in Q2 of the same year.

The monitor market, however, grew 8.3 percent year over year within the same period, but the 2018 calendar year saw ten-year high of 10.4 percent growth compared to 2017.

IDC market analyst Sean Ashari said the Intel CPU shortage and uncertainty in business conditions impacted an otherwise strong year for PC shipments, while the PC monitor market was buoyed by multi-monitor setups in offices, remote workers wanting to duplicate their workplace rigs at home and innovations in gaming-specific displays.

“Competition from mobile devices, the slow pace of innovation and improvement in mainstream PC devices, and a disappointing gaming graphics hardware refresh cycle are all contributing to the extended life span of the consumer PC device”, Ashari said.

“For much of the year the opposite trend was seen in commercial PC device shipments that were encouraged by SMB tax rebates, the looming Windows 7 End of Support deadline, and the growing adoption of the PC-as-a-service model.”

However both PC and PC monitor shipments are predicted to decline 3 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively in 2019 as a result of falling house prices, shrinking household savings, and uncertainty around interest rates.

“In 2019, government and exporting businesses are expected to increase spending on PC devices, while locally trading businesses face a slow decline in business confidence,” Ashari said.

“[Meanwhile] growth in monitor demand is likely going to originate from organisations acquiring an additional monitor for their uses, as productivity and user satisfaction gains are well documented.”