Worldwide PC shipments experienced the sharpest decline in nine years in second quarter of 2022: Gartner

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 72 million units in the second quarter of 2022, a 12.6% decline from the second quarter of 2021, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. This is the sharpest decline in nine years for the global PC market, brought on by geopolitical, economic, and supply chain challenges impacting all regional markets.

"The decline we saw in the first quarter of 2022 has accelerated in the second quarter, driven by the ongoing geopolitical instability caused by the Russian Invasion of Ukraine inflationary pressure on spending, and a steep downturn in demand for Chromebooks,” said Mikako Kitagawa, research director at Gartner.

“Supply chain disruptions also continued, but the major cause of PC delivery delays changed from component shortages to logistics disruptions. Enterprise buyers continued to experience longer PC delivery times than usual, but the lead times began to improve by the end of the second quarter, partially because key cities in China reopened in the middle of the quarter," he added.

The top three vendors in the worldwide PC market experienced declines in PC shipments in the second quarter of 2022, but their ranking remained unchanged. The combination of HP declining 27.5% and Dell declining 5.2% allowed Dell to move to within 0.3 percentage points of HP in market share. Apple was the only vendor to experience growth in the second quarter of 2022.

Lenovo’s worldwide PC shipments declined year-over-year, the third consecutive quarter of decline for the company. However, Lenovo grew 2% in the worldwide desktop PC market, partly because the company improved its supply chain in EMEA. HP experienced a decline of 27.5% in the second quarter of 2022, primarily due to a steep decrease in Chromebooks shipments.

Dell’s shipments declined year-over-year for the first time since the third quarter of 2020. Shipments were down across all key regions except Latin America where Dell registered 6.5% growth. Despite the overall shipments decline, Dell’s market share increased 1 percentage point compared to a year ago.

Further, the U.S. PC market declined 17.5% in the second quarter of 2022. Although the market experienced shipment growth in both desktop PCs and laptops (excluding Chromebooks), this growth was offset by a 50% year-over-year decline in Chromebook shipments. Dell secured the top spot in the U.S. PC market based on shipments with 27.2% market share. Despite a decline of 43.5%, HP took the No. 2 position with 22.3% market share.

The EMEA PC market was the hardest hit in the second quarter of 2022 with a 18% decline in PC shipments, reaching only 17.8 million units.

Moreover, the APAC (excluding Japan) PC market declined 5.2% in the second quarter of 2022, driven by a 16% decline in the China PC market.