The analyst company Canalys has reported that PC shipments were down 37% in the first quarter year-over-year to 10 million units. While that’s not great for OEMs, the company believes that we will see growth in shipments for the remainder of the year and 2024, echoing what it said in the US.
Canalys said that notebook shipments account for 8.1 million units, down 37%. Desktops accounted for 1.9 million units, down 35%. The company also looked at tablets, which it said performed better, declining just 20% to 5.2 million units.
“Western Europe’s PC market faced another large decline in Q1 2023 but there are positive signals that the region is past the worst,” said Canalys Research Analyst Kieren Jessop.
“Although the consumer segment suffered a large year-on-year decline, the sequential drop after the holiday season was less drastic than in recent years. Consumer confidence levels in the EU have been rising for several months now, but inflation remains a drag on PC spending in the short term. However, positive impacts from inventory level corrections and planned promotional activities will see the segment make a modest recovery by the end of the year.”
Among desktop, notebook, and workstation shipments, Apple performed best seeing a decline of 18.8% year-over-year; despite the decline, the company managed to grow its market share from 11.3% to 14.6%.
With regards to tablets, the best performer was Samsung which saw year-over-year growth of 1.9% taking its total market share from 18.9% to 23.9%. Apple saw a decline in this segment of 13.9% but its market share grew too from 41.1% to 44.1%.
During the pandemic, lots of people bought new computing devices to perform work from home, this caused a slowdown in shipments in the subsequent years but analysts are starting to expect shipments to increase again soon as customers look to start refreshing their devices.
