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PC shipments just rose, thanks to Windows 10

No, this story didn’t come through a wormhole in time. Q2 2018 was the best since 2012

Sales of personal computers rose in 2018’s second quarter, making it the best time to be in the PC business since 2012.

News of the sale rise came from analyst firms IDC and Gartner who’ve both hit F9 on their spreadsheets recording Q2 shipments and found a positive number. Gartner found 62.1 million PC shipments, up a 1.4 per cent compared to Q2 2017. IDC counted 62.3 million PCs exiting factories, which us 2.7 per cent. Both firms credited the business market and Windows 10 for the bounce – it appears that businesses are finally making the jump to Microsoft’s latest and buying new PCs to make it happen. IDC also opined that Q2 2017 sales were impacted by supply chain problems, so this year it’s just been possible to build more machines.

HP and Lenovo are duking it out for the top slot: IDC has HP ahead by about a million machines, Gartner has Lenovo in the lead by just 12,000 devices (after taking into account its completed acquisition of Fujitsu's PC business).

Dell, Apple and Acer fill out the top five on both lists.

Neither analyst firm was willing to declare the PC market has moved into a sustainable recovery phase. Gartner warned that the Windows 10 refresh cycle has two years to go and after that the market will become more challenging.

A fine quarter, then, but there’s little reason to pop the champagne because while this is the best news since 2012 back then PCs shipped at a rate of about 87 million a quarter.

Today shipments are about 25 million a quarter lower.

On the upside, humanity is still building nearly 250 million personal computers every year, which is quite some achievement! ®

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