Earlier this year IDC reported that PC shipments for the second quarter of 2022 fell 15.3% compared to Q2 last year. Now the analysts have published preliminary results for the third quarter, which show that the industry suffered another 15% drop.
The total number of shipments (direct to consumers plus shipments to distribution channels) added up to 74.3 million, a tick up from the 71.3 million shipped in Q2, but below the 80.5 million units shipped in Q1 (which represented a 5.1% decline year on year from Q1 2021).
Overall, it looks like 2022 will be weaker than last year. That said, shipments are still “well above” pre-pandemic levels when a large portion of new PCs bought were just meant to replace old Windows 7 machines, as the OS was nearing its end of life stage (the deadline was on January 14, 2020).
What’s going to happen next? Well, IDC has also been keeping an eye on on the Average Selling Prices (ASPs) of computers. Components were in short supply and their prices went up (as did the costs of logistics), so ASPs rose for five quarter straight, hitting a peak of $910 in Q1 this year, the highest level since 2004. However ASPs fell in Q2 and again in Q3, which indicates “a market in retreat,” writes Linn Huang, research vice president, Devices & Displays at IDC.
| Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q3 2022 (Preliminary results, shipments are in thousands of units) | |||||
| Company | 3Q22 Shipments | 3Q22 Market Share | 3Q21 Shipments | 3Q21 Market Share | 3Q22/3Q21 Growth |
| 1. Lenovo | 16,880 | 22.70% | 20,129 | 23.10% | -16.10% |
| 2. HP Inc. | 12,706 | 17.10% | 17,603 | 20.20% | -27.80% |
| 3. Dell Technologies | 11,963 | 16.10% | 15,184 | 17.40% | -21.20% |
| 4. Apple | 10,060 | 13.50% | 7,174 | 8.20% | 40.20% |
| 5. ASUS | 5,540 | 7.50% | 6,011 | 6.90% | -7.80% |
| Others | 17,103 | 23.00% | 21,218 | 24.30% | -19.40% |
| Total | 74,252 | 100.00% | 87,319 | 100.00% | -15.00% |
| Source: IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, October 10, 2022 | |||||
Looking at individual companies, Apple surged up 40.2% compared to the same period last year, the rest of the Top 5 companies were in decline. This means that Apple almost matched Dell in volume this quarter, even though the situation looked very different in Q3 last year – Dell shipped twice as many computers as Apple did back then.
A quick note of what IDC includes under the “PC” label – this means desktops, laptops and workstations, but not x86 servers or tablets (2-in-1 convertibles were not included either).
