Worldwide PC shipments decline 4.3%, HP Inc pips Lenovo

Mumbai, July 14 (IANS) Worldwide PC shipments hit 61.1 million units in the second quarter of 2017 -- a 4.3 per cent decline from the second quarter last year, market research firm Gartner said on Friday.

HP Inc reclaimed the top position from Lenovo in the worldwide PC market in the second quarter and achieved five consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth.

Lenovo's global shipments declined 8.4 per cent in the second quarter of 2017 and Dell achieved five consecutive quarters of year-on-year global shipment growth, as shipments increased 1.4 per cent in the second quarter.

In the Asia-Pacific region, PC shipments surpassed 21.5 million units in the second quarter of 2017, down 5.1 per cent from the same period last year.

The PC industry is in the midst of a five-year slump and this is the 11th straight quarter of declining shipments.

Shipments in the second quarter of this year were the lowest quarter volume since 2007.

"Higher PC prices due to the impact of component shortages for DRAM, solid state drives (SSDs) and LCD panels had a pronounced negative impact on PC demand in the second quarter of 2017," Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

"The approach to higher component costs varied by vendor. Some decided to absorb the component price hike without raising the final price of their devices, while other vendors transferred the costs to the end-user price," Kitagawa added.

In the business segment, vendors could not increase the price too quickly as price is typically locked in based on the contract while in the consumer market, the price hike has a greater impact as buying habits are more sensitive to price increases.

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