PC market still holding steady: Gartner, Canalys

The global PC market, excluding tablets and Chromebooks, has grown in the second quarter of 2021 over both the previous year and the previous quarter, according to data from Canalys and Gartner – although the two research firms slightly disagree on the extent.

Both firms had similar numbers for total worldwide device shipments this quarter, as Canalys went with 70.75 million and Gartner stated 71.63 million. A discrepancy of fewer than one million units.

However, the companies offered different perspectives on what that meant in terms of market growth.

Canalys’ data showed that the number of PCs shipped worldwide increased by 6.9 percent, up from 66.2 million, over the same quarter last year, and by 0.5 percent over Q1 of this year.

Gartner’s numbers said that the yearly growth was 4.6 percent, up from 68.5 million, and put quarterly growth at 2.5 percent.

“The global semiconductor shortage and subsequent component supply constraints have extended lead time for some enterprise mobile PC models to as long as 120 days,” said Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa. 

“This has led to prices increasing in the bill of materials, which vendors have passed on to end users. Moving forward, rising prices could continue to slow PC demand through the next 6 to 12 months.”

In terms of vendor market share, while Gartner’s data excluded tablets and Chromebooks, Canalys’ did not. While general growth trends could be calculated, vendor numbers could not. This means that vendor market share and growth numbers can be outlined separately, but are not useful for comparison.

Gartner’s numbers show that the market share rankings have remained consistent over the past year with Lenovo (24 percent), HP Inc (20 percent) and Dell (17.1 percent) taking the top three spots, respectively, and Apple (8.5 percent) coming in a distant fourth.

However, the year over year growth numbers is where things get interesting.

Lenovo’s growth was slight at just 3.6 percent and HP Inc’s share actually decreased by 11.3 percent.

In contrast, Dell was up 14.4 percent and Apple’s share rose by 19.7 percent. 

Adding in Chromebook and tablet sales, Canalys’ rankings have also remained stable and also see Lenovo taking the top spot with 19.7 percent market share.

However, Apple (18.1 percent) comes in second, pushing HP Inc (15.8 percent) and Dell (10.7 percent) down to third and fourth, respectively.

All four vendors saw some annual growth, with Lenovo out ahead at 22.9 percent, only exceeded by the fifth-placed Samsung that saw 26.4 percent growth for the year.

Dell came in with a reasonable 16.3 percent growth, while both Apple (5.1 percent) and HP Inc (2.7 percent) saw only single digits, though Apple still outpaced the market growth rate.