PC shipments in Q4 2016 in Australia totalled 1.12 million units (Windows and MacOS desktop and notebook), a year-on-year decline of 3.2%, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) in its Asia Pacific Quarterly PC Tracker.
That is the bad news, the good news is that the market performed better than expected in comparison to the previous forecast of -10.2%.
Total shipments of PCs in 2016 slipped to 4.01 million units, down by 7.2% YoY. The first half of 2016 was still constrained by Dick Smith’s exit, high inventory, and free Windows 10 upgrades. However, the market bounced back in the second half of 2016, with a significant hardware refreshment push, both within the enterprise and public sector. The commercial sector had a lower decline of 1.4% in 4Q2016.
Sagar Raghavendra, client devices analyst for IDC Australia, said, “Bring your own device (BYOD) seems to be fading away, particularly within the education segment, as several state education departments have returned to centralised purchasing policy.”
{loadposition ray}IDC says the annual PC market share grew at different speeds year-on-year.
- The public sector grew by 25.6%.
- The corporate sector grew by 25.3%.
- The education sector grew by 36.4%.
- The SMB segment declined by 28.7%.
- The consumer segment declined by 5%.
“(The) Windows 10 free upgrade seems to have helped the SMBs to extend their hardware refresh cycles resulting in the decline. Microsoft and Intel’s continued incentivisation to OEMs seems to have helped lessen the decline in the market, as the PC segment performed better than originally forecast,” added Sagar.
The Notebook market remained flat YoY, with the convertible form factor experiencing a 41.8% growth. The desktop PC decline was driven by more demand for small/micro small form factor hybrids.
“The market responded well to Intel’s Skylake processor launch in late 2015. The same was not visible with the Kabylake processor launch at the end of 2016, as the Desktop PC market attracted only a lukewarm response,” added Sagar.
HP continues to hold the top position with a market share of 27.4%. Its growth was largely aided by superior performance in education and the public sector.
Apple remained second with a share of 16.9%, the majority of its growth coming from national retail.
Lenovo maintained third position, same as the previous year, at 16.1%.
Dell and Acer completed the top five, ending at 14.5% and 12.2% respectively. Acer gained about 4.4% market share from the previous year, with a consistent growth in consumer and education segment, including a large Chromebook deployment.
The future?
Australia PC shipments are forecast to decline by 5.5% in 2017, followed by a softer decline of 3.5% in 2018, according to an updated forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC) APAC Quarterly PC Tracker.