Commercial customers keep PC market ticking over

Commercial buyers are continuing to keep the PC market going with improvements in the number of units sold across Western Europe last month.

Market analysis from Context showed that PCs sold by distributors increased by 4% year-on-year in July with the enterprise market driving that growth.

Sales of commercial PCs increased by 10% year-on-year, which maintains a trend that has been going right through the first half.

The demand was spread across all formats with notebook sales improving by 12.5%, desktops up by 4% and workstations climbing by 13%.

The problems on the consumer side of the market continued and although in the first half things had improved in July the overall sales were still down by 3% when compared to 2017.

So far there does not appear to have been much 'back to school' growth, although demand for ultrathin mobile and Chromebooks was up.

“The commercial segment is expected to remain the stronger in H2 2018 as more companies upgrade to Windows 10, refresh their ageing hardware, and shift towards greater mobility”, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context.

In terms of country performance the UK was out in front with 23% growth in July, followed by Belgium with 22.8% and then Spain with 20.4%.

The worst performing country was Italy, with a 0.5% decline, and France and Portugal were also struggling with low single digit growth.

The Context figures will give heart to those hardware resellers pinning their hopes on a strong Q4 with Windows 10 still driving users to upgrade.

There is also traditionally a wave of fresh launches designed to spark life into the pre-Christmas consumer market that are yet to arrive and have an impact.