US PC shipment declines slowed in the second quarter

The analyst firm Canalys has reported that US PC shipments declined more slowly during the second quarter compared to the same period the year before. The category, which includes desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined 6% year-over-year with 18.2 million units.

The company said that notebooks, which includes mobile workstations, declined 4% to 15.2 million shipments. A steeper decline was avoided by the return of Chromebook demand in the education sector.

Things were not as good for desktops which saw a steeper decline with shipments falling by 12% year-over-year to 3.0 million units. Canalys also noted that the US tablet market saw a 5% decline during Q2 to 10.3 million units.

Commenting on the figures, Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys, said:

‘Despite undergoing another year-on-year decline, the US PC market showed promising signs of improvement in the second quarter. With the buildup of channel inventories now largely cleared, pockets of demand strength are now being reflected in vendors’ sell-in shipment performance.

A key area that helped drive volumes was the return of demand from education institutions, backed by the latest wave of federal funding, ahead of a licensing cost increase for ChromeOS. This helped propel Chromebook shipments to 4.7 million units, the highest level since peak deployments during the first half of 2021.’

According to the data, PC shipments in the commercial sector declined just 4% year-over-year. Meanwhile, there was a decline of 10% in the consumer sector. The analyst said that we probably won’t see a recovery in the consumer market until the fourth quarter when products are discounted for the holidays.

In terms of brands, nobody at all will be surprised to hear that the company with the most growth in PC shipments was Apple. It saw growth year-over-year of 32.6% thanks to the cultish following it has and higher spending ability of many of its customers.

Acer was hardest hit seeing its growth decline by 20.3%. In Q2 2022, it held 14.6% of the market share but in Q2 2023 it had declined to 11.9%. The company with the highest market share was HP at 26.5%, it also saw a modest annual growth of 6.0%.

Among tablets, Apple was the only company to record growth. It extended its market share from 41.3% in Q2 2022 to 52.2% in Q2 2023 with 20.1% annual growth.

Source: Canalys