According to IDC Q1 2015 EMEA PC shipments total 20.2 million units-- a -7.7% Y-o-Y decrease caused by decelerating business renewals, currency fluctuations and political tensions across various CEMA territories.
Portable PCs see better results than desktops (-3.6% Y-o-Y decline as opposed to -14%) thanks to the final 15-inch portable with Bing shipments in W., C. and E. Europe, even if resulting inventories across different channels appear to be high. Meanwhile the decelerating commercial market reflects the end of 2014 renewal waves caused by the end of Windows XP support.
Thus, W. European PC shipments are down by -2% Y-o-Y, CEE declines by -23% and MEA by -10%. Curiously the consumer market shows better-than-expected results in W. Europe (thanks to the aforementioned Bing notebooks), while commercial PCs see "strong" increases in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.
"Q1 2015 was a transition period after strong renewals in 2014. While there are some expectations around the new CPU platform and operating systems to revive the market in coming quarters, the strong dollar will negatively impact IT budgets as product prices in local currencies have and will increase further," IDC remarks. "Consumers and IT managers will have to decide if they postpone purchases or make compromises on their choice or amend their budgets."
When it comes to vendors EMEA continues to see increasing consolidation, as HP and Lenovo dominate with respective Q1 2015 market share of 23.2% and 20.4%. HP sees flat (0.1%) growth on shipments reaching 4.7m units, while S. Europe fuels strong (19.8%) Lenovo growth.
Dell retains 3rd place with shipments reaching 2.4m and 10.9% Q1 2015 market share as its portable PCs face stronger than average declines. Acer follows even as it suffers from the situation in CEE, and Asus sees contracting (-8.7%) results after a number of quarters of strong growth.
