For three consecutive quarters, the PC market had experienced a negative growth and the same has been repeated this previous quarter too, leading to four quarters of continuous PC market depression. PC shipments have thus declined 14% to 114.2 million units, highlights a new report by Canalys.
All regions, except North America, have experienced shipment declines in tens or twenties, including EMEA that fell almost 18%. There is still a little good news though. The two-in-one PC category grew 77% year-on-year and global notebook shipments increased 12% sequentially, which indicates that this year won’t end so bad for the PC market after all.
The worst performing category in the computing sector in Q3 2015, with shipments falling 20% year-on-year, is the Tablets. These portable computing devices were once the driver for PC market growth. The market leader in this category, Apple, saw its sales decline below 10 million units for the first time since Q2 2011 to 9.9 million units, leading to dip of 20% in the iPad sales.
A close second, Samsung, shipped 7.9 million units facing stiff competition from the low-end. Lenovo follows the Korean giant, then, with a surprising increase in sales of around 2% to 3.1 million units, as growth in EMEA and the US offset declines in other regions.
Global shipments have seen depression because Chinese manufacturers have started turning their attention from tablets to other products, including large screen smart phones and wearables. The steepest decline in global sales, around 34% year-on-year, was seen in The Greater China. Apple still leads the market but has seen a decline of 13% from the previous quarter and other local vendors like Huawei and Lenovo are also experiencing sequential declines of around 20%.
New iPads were not announced until the end of Q3, meaning that the vast majority of Apple’s shipments comprised of products that have not been refreshed for over a year. Although iPad shipment declines do not make for good headlines, the fact that Apple continues to lead in this market speaks volumes,
commented Tim Coulling, Senior Analyst at Canalys.
Holiday purchases, as well as the launch of the iPad Pro and iPad mini 4, will boost shipments in Q4. However, we do not expect a significant increase in sales until Apple launch a successor to the iPad Air 2, a product that some expected in Q4 but is currently unannounced.
This Canalys report, while pretty much in sync with what we got from IDC a day ago, is strikingly different in statistics. While IDC proposed an 11% decline, Canalys says that figure to be around 20%.
