PC sales grow - just a little - on the back of Windows 10 upgrades

Worldwide PC shipments in 2019 nosed past 261 million units, according to Gartner

The PC market has enjoyed its first full year of growth following seven consecutive years of regression.

That's according to the box counters at market research firm Gartner, which says the worldwide PC shipments in 2019 surpassed 261 million units, a growth of 0.6 per cent from previous year.

While the PC industry had previously seen its first quarterly growth in six years in the second quarter of 2018, it was 2019 that finally led to the first full year of growth since 2011.

As per the data collected by Gartner, 70.6 million units of PCs were shipped globally in the fourth quarter of 2019, up 2.3 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2018.

The top three vendors in were Lenovo, HP, and Dell, which accounted for roughly 65 per cent of the total shipments in the fourth quarter.

Lenovo was the market leader with 24.8 per cent market share, while HP and Dell were able to grab the second and third spot with 22.8 per cent and 17.2 per cent market share, respectively.

Apple, Asus and Acer were among the top six, with market shares of 7.5 per cent, 5.8 per cent and 5.7 per cent, respectively.

According to Gartner, the growth in global PC shipments was stimulated by increasing demand for Windows 10 upgrades, in preparation for the cessation of support for Windows 7 yesterday. This persuaded many organisations to upgrade older devices, rather than roll out Windows 10 onto their existing PCs and laptops.

More than 900 million devices were running on Windows 10 in September 2019, according to Microsoft. There are still millions of PCs yet to make the upgrade, however, with more than 30 per cent of desktops still running Windows 7, according to the latest figures from NetMarketShare.

While the PC market grew 4.6 per cent in the US and 3.6 per cent in EMEA in the fourth quarter of 2019, shipments in Asia/Pacific declined 6.1 per cent to 22 million units, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decline for the region.