Unsurprisingly, the decline in PC sales continued into the third quarter. After a decline of 5.1% in the first three months of the year, then a fall of 15.3% in the second quarter, sales in the sector fell by 15% year-on-year between July and September, with 74, 3 million units sold over the period, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.
Faced with its biggest decline in almost a decade, the market is bearing the brunt of the current economic slump, amid global inflation, which is stifling consumer purchasing power, and shortages of components. prolonged electronics. The current situation is aggravated by a more moderate demand than at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when consumers massively equipped themselves, in particular for teleworking.
Apple does not know the crisis
All of these negative factors are impacting the main manufacturers in the sector, such as the leader Lenovo, which saw its shipments fall by 16.1% over one year in the third quarter. The drop is even steeper for HP and Dell, which fell 27.8% and 21.2% respectively in the third quarter. The three companies that dominate the PC market have all seen their market share decline in one year, unlike Apple, which continues to record good performance despite the difficulties in the sector.
Between July and September, the Cupertino company recorded a surge of 40.2% of its shipments, with 10 million units sold. In one year, the market share of Tim Cook’s group has gone from 8.2% to 13.5%. After taking advantage of the renewal of its range of computers with its M1 chip, which is about to succeed the M2 chip, Apple managed to overtake Acer and Asus in the third quarter. Regarding Asus, the Taiwanese manufacturer has certainly recorded a 7.8% drop in shipments over the past three months, but at the same time it has seen its market share drop from 6.9% to 7.5% with 5.6 million units sold.
The average selling price up five quarters in a row
If the market is down and weighs down the main players in the sector – with the exception of Apple -, it remains however at levels well above those observed before the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, to compensate for the decline in sales, manufacturers are increasing their prices. “Shortages over the past few years have aggressively driven product line shifts to the higher end. This, coupled with rising component and logistics costs, pushed the average selling price up for five straight quarters to $910 in Q1 2022, the highest since 2004. However, with demand slowing , promotions that are in full swing and orders that are reduced, the increase in the average selling price reversed in the second quarter”analyzes Linn Huang, vice president of research in charge of electronic devices and displays at IDC.
The trend should not be reversed in the coming months, although Black Friday and the holiday season are commercial highlights, which could help limit the decline in PC sales.