The sky is blue, water is wet and UK PC shipments are down

Brexit and the general election were highlighted by Gartner as being among the reasons why the good folk of Britain purchased far fewer PCs in Q2.

Sales of computers into retailers and distributors dropped by around eleven per cent year-on-year in the period from the start of April to the end of June, according to data sent to The Register by the analyst.

This translated into shipments of around 1.9 million desktops, notebooks and ultramobiles: broken down into market segments, sales to consumers dropped ten per cent and businesses dropped by eight per cent.

Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, attributed the sales shrinkage to a purchasing delay caused by the UK general election and ongoing uncertainty created by the decision to leave the European Union.

Of the top five major vendors, Lenovo was hit hardest, with a unit sale crash of 22.6 per cent, HP Inc went backwards to the tune of 11.8 per cent and Apple dropped 9.6 per cent.

Lenovo's UK boss, you might recall, jumped ship and quit back in June.

Jon Harber had been tasked with amassing profitable growth but it likely wasn’t meant to come at the cost of sales growth.

Only Dell and Acer bucked that downward trend, reporting shipment gains of 9.4 and 7.1 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, over in Western Europe, 10.9 million units were shipped into the channel, which equated to a three per cent year on year decline.

It is now almost seven years - save for the odd quarter here and there - since the UK PC market last flourished. If only there were another XP-end-of-life boon to cling to. ®