By Kymberly Martin
Driven by commercial sector.
In some positive news for the PC industry, shipments beat expectations in Q3 2016, recovering from a negative 2016 first-half due to Dick Smith and Toshiba exiting the market. However, Harvey Norman’s Modern PC program seems to have contributed to the growth in the consumer segment. Significant growth also came from the education, government and corporate sectors as small-medium business continued to decline.
PC shipments in Australia reached 992,000 units in Q3 2016, with year-on-year (YoY) growth of 3.5%, beating the forecast by around 7%, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) Asia Pacific Quarterly PC Tracker. The majority of the growth was driven by the commercial sector, at 6% YoY, while the consumer segment witnessed a growth of 1% YoY.
Notebook and desktop PCs grew by 3.2% YoY while the convertible form factor grew at 91%. Increasing numbers of corporate and public sector agencies are deploying convertibles in large quantities, noted IDC analyst, Sagar Raghavendra. “There is healthy competition in the market between convertibles and detachables,” he said.
HP held the top spot with a market share of 28.1%, followed by Lenovo and Dell and 18.8% and 15.5% respectively. HP increased market share with a strong performance in both the commercial and consumer segments. Apple lost 5.3% market share from the previous year, holding to a market share of 12.8% while Acer gained a share of 1.5% ending at a 10.8% share.