The worldwide PC market continues to decline. According to the latest numbers from IDC, PC manufacturers shipped just 71.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, with yearly totals falling below the 300 million unit mark for the first time since 2008. But it’s not all bad, with 2-in-1 devices growing to fill part of the gap in traditional PC buying.
“Consumer sentiment toward PCs remains a challenge, though clearly there are pockets of growth,” IDC research manager Jay Chou said. “Even as mainstream desktop and notebooks see their lifetimes stretched ever longer, Apple’s emergence as a top 5 global PC vendor in 2015 shows that there can be strong demand for innovative, even premium-priced systems that put user experience first.”
Year-over-year, PC shipments declined 10.6 percent overall, which is about what analysts were expecting. Perhaps the largest holdup is people waiting for Windows 10 to settle down and manufacturers to build interesting products taking advantage of the new operating system.
Those who are adopting Windows 10 on new machines seem to be turning to the 2-in-1 machines—which IDC counts separately—as those machines can more fully utilize Windows 10’s touch features. If they were counted with overall PC sale, that would bring the year-over-year decline in PC shipments for the fourth quarter to just 5 percent, and a decline of just 7.5 percent for all of 2015.
Even without 2-in-1 devices, 2016 PC shipments are likely to pick up, slowing the overall decline, as people look to upgrade devices before Microsoft’s free Windows 10 push runs out and as it phases out older versions of Windows. Also, manufacturers will be coming out with more refined devices that take advantage of the more popular Windows 10 features, pushing consumers to upgrade to new devices.
In IDC’s calculations, Lenovo still leads the global PC market, with 21.4 percent of the worldwide market share. Only ASUS and Apple showed growth among the top manufacturers, with Apple growing nearly 3 percent and Asus rising about 0.8 percent year over year.
