Lenovo Reclaims Top PC Maker Status, Microsoft Enters Top 5 In US While Apple Slides Again
On the global stage, Lenovo was the top performer, showing a 10.7 percent increase YoY to 15.8 million units shipped. Hewlett-Packard was in second place with 14.6 million units (6.2 percent YoY increase), while Dell sat in third place with 10.7 million units (5.3 percent increase YoY).
Apple actually posted an 8.5 percent decline for the quarter, bringing its fourth place showing to 4.9 million units. The biggest loser, however, was ASUS which saw its unit shipments fall 15.9 percent YoY to just 4 million units (giving it a sixth-place finish).
With respect to Intel's current processor supply woes, Gartner doesn't seem to think that it will have more than a "short-term impact" on overall demand. “Although the third-quarter results did not show any material impact, the Intel CPU shortage could influence the PC market moving forward with price increases and changes to the vendor landscape," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Current expectation is that the shortage will continue into 2019, but Intel will prioritize the high-end CPU as well as the CPUs for business PCs. In the meantime, AMD will pick up the part of the market where Intel cannot supply CPUs."
There is one aspect of Gartner's numbers, however, that we really want to call attention to at this time. The research firm posted its preliminary PC shipment numbers for the U.S. market and for the first time ever, Microsoft's Surface family actually broke out from the "Other" sales category which lumps together all of the also-ran manufacturers.
Microsoft shipped roughly 600,000 units in the United States for the quarter, which was enough for a 4.2 percent share of the market. It's roughly a third of fourth-place Apple's share of the market, but it shows that Microsoft is making some inroads in the market.
The boys and gals in Redmond stand to see that share rise further with the release of the Surface Laptop 2, Surface Pro 6 and the new Surface Studio 2.
