According to a report by Gartner, Microsoft has joined the ranks of the top 5 PC makers in the Unites States. This is a first for the company, and bodes well for its computer manufacturing prospects in the country. The company has made it’s way into the top 5 rankings, by replacing Acer.
As per the Gartner report, Microsoft now holds 4.1 percent of the US PC market. This has been made possible thanks in part to the company’s Surface range of devices, which have been a hit since their launch. It is important to note that Gartner counts Windows-based tablets as PCs, while discounting tablets running different operating systems from its estimates.
Looking at the market as a whole, global PC shipments totaled 67.2 million units in the third quarter of 2018. This marked an insignificant 0.1 percent increase from the third quarter of 2017. Considering that the PC market can be rather volatile and is notorious for sudden decreases, this year-over-year stability is something for manufacturers to be thankful for.
Meanwhile, the PC market continues to be driven by corporate demands. As per, Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner:
The PC market continued to be driven by steady corporate PC demand, which was driven by Windows 10 PC hardware upgrades. We expect the Windows 10 upgrade cycle to continue through 2020 at which point the upgrade demand will diminish. Despite the third quarter typically showing strong consumer PC sales due to the back-to-school season, weakness in consumer PC demand continued, offsetting the strong sales in the business market.
Globally, Lenovo remained the top PC maker, followed by HP, Dell, and Apple. Acer came fifth, with Asus a close sixth. Microsoft has not been able to gain enough traction with its Surface range in the rest of the world, and it will have to pull up its boots if it wants to replicate its newly gained position in the US across the rest of the world.
