IT industry analyst Canalys has published a new report focused on the PC market in the US. The key finding is that there was a "significant improvement" observed in Q2 2023, with just a 6% decline in the US PC market year-on-year (YoY). Even better, the Canalys report goes on to predict positive market growth through both 2024 and 2025. Canalys' report considers devices such as desktop and laptop Windows PCs, as well as devices with MacOS, ChromeOS, and other operating systems.
A decline, albeit in single figures, doesn't sound like something to be celebrated, but the above graph from Canalys helps put the US PC shipment data in perspective. Pondering over the graph you can see the growth of the market plotted over time and the most recent upturn could cause some justified optimism. The graph appears to show the beginning of an inflection point. Canalys is very positive about the latest figures and recons that we will see "consecutive years of growth in 2024 and 2025."
Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys, explained why the latest Q2 shipments figures were promising. "With the buildup of channel inventories now largely cleared, pockets of demand strength are now being reflected in vendors’ sell-in shipment performance," said Dutt. Some of the factors that have come into play recently to boost PC demand include educational demand, new federal funding, and ChromeOS licensing cost changes. Apparently, the latter has led to 4.7 million Chromebook shipments in the US, which is the highest since the pandemic peak Chromebook adoption in H1 2021.
The turn from negative to positive growth should be completed this year. Canalys sees an even smaller shipment decline of 4% in Q3 2023, and then something of a boom in Q4 2023 with growth of 12%, setting up a positive trend for the coming two years. Some of the influences behind the upcoming expected positivity are the more favorable macroeconomic landscape, the continued transition from Windows 10 to 11, and the emergence of AI-capable PCs.
As usual, Canalys broke up its figures to provide granular data shining a light on underlying trends. So, you can check their charts and figures for a view of trends in desktops, laptops, tablets, operating systems, and the fortunes of the various hardware vendors.
Significant changes seen in the data we see include the success of HP in usurping Dell in the desktop and laptop PC market. Another obvious success over the last year is Apple with annual growth of over 32%. It is currently fourth place, behind Lenovo, and it will be interesting to see if MacOS hardware can extend into third place anytime soon.
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