Asia-Pacific PC shipments down, China suffers first dip: Gartner

Summary:⁠ For the first time in history, China has recorded a PC shipment decline as the market in the region takes an overall hit, according to analyst firm Gartner.

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PC shipments in Asia-Pacific have dropped 2.6 per cent in Q2, year on year, to 30.3 million units, with China experiencing its first ever PC shipment decline, according to Gartner.

The PC category includes desktop and mobile PCs.

Last month, the analyst firm reported that worldwide PC shipment figures remained flat in the same period.

In Q2, Australia suffered a 9.2 per cent drop in shipments. For Taiwan, that figure was 5 per cent.

China experienced a 5.4 per cent PC shipment decline, a first for the country.

"Gloomy worldwide economies have put a dampener on PC spending in the region over the past year," Gartner principal analyst Lillian Tay said in a statement. "The wide array of alternate products entering the market is also affecting consumer spend, resulting in declining interest in PC spending."

India and Malaysia, however, defied the downward trend, recording 17 per cent and 21.6 per cent growth in PC shipment, respectively. This was largely attributed to high uptake of mobile PCs.

The introduction of the much-hyped ultrabooks has failed to drive PC demand, and Tay said that this was likely due to prices for the devices remaining high.

However, the price of ultrabooks is set to come down in the third quarter of 2013, according to Gartner. With the release of Windows 8 in October, PC shipment numbers will be given a boost, a sentiment that is reflected by rival analyst firm IDC.

In a worldwide PC market report released by IDC last week, it said that the current shipment slowdown is also due to companies and consumers waiting patiently for the Windows 8 OS release before making decisions to update their computing equipment.

According to Gartner, Lenovo was still top dog in the PC space in the second quarter, followed by Acer, Dell, HP and Asus. Out of the five vendors, only Lenovo and Asus experienced PC shipment growth
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