PC shipments in the United States fell by 12.1% in the third quarter year-over-year. Dell, HP, Apple, Lenovo, and Acer are the biggest manufacturers, and of these, only Apple and Acer managed to score positive growth over the period. Canalys said that notebooks were hit hardest with a 14% decline, but desktops grew by 1%. The big drop-off in notebook shipments was due to more cautious business spending in addition to lower demand from the consumer and education sectors.
“The U.S. PC market was already in an extended period of contraction as both consumer and education demand struggled with inflation and saturation,” said Brian Lynch, Canalys Research Analyst. “Now, the previously resilient commercial segment has started to wane, posting its first year-on-year decline in 2022.”
Even though PC vendors had a torrid time of it in the third quarter, expectations don’t look much better for the fourth quarter, either. The holiday season in the United States should help sales somewhat, but overall, Canalys believes the market will continue its downturn. With inflation hitting pockets, people are cutting spend on technology products.
The analyst believes that things will begin turning around in 2023. It expects demand from education to start recovering slowly next year, with the main bulk of device refreshes occurring in 2024.
As mentioned earlier, Apple and Acer were the only two companies to see positive growth in Q3 year-over-year, but Dell managed to hold onto its first place spot. Dell has 26.1% of market share, compared to 27.6% the year before. The market share and units shipped for the vendors are as follows:
| U.S. desktop, notebook, and workstation shipments (market share and annual growth) Q3 2022. Unit shipments in millions. | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor (company) | Q3 2022 shipments | Q3 2022 market share | Q3 2021 shipments | Q3 2021 market share | Annual growth |
| Dell | 4.7 | 26.1% | 5.6 | 27.6% | -16.9% |
| HP | 4.1 | 22.7% | 5.3 | 26.0% | -23.2% |
| Apple | 3.0 | 16.7% | 2.3 | 11.6% | 26.5% |
| Lenovo | 2.7 | 15.4% | 3.5 | 17.4% | -22.2% |
| Acer | 1.0 | 5.7% | 0.9 | 4.4% | 14.0% |
| Others | 2.4 | 13.4% | 2.6 | 13.0% | -9.1% |
| Total | 17.8 | 100.0% | 20.3 | 100.0% | -12.1% |
Consumer demand for PCs in the future was not expanded upon much by Canalys, other than the fact that there will be “further headwinds”. From the macroeconomic perspective, the Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates, which could lead to further job losses and make debts more expensive, further squeezing disposable income. How long it takes to recover will affect how long it takes consumer demand for PCs to rise again.
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