Dell and HP share reasons to be optimistic about the PC market

Two of the largest hardware players have indicated that the commercial PC market is continuing to show signs of growth and the Windows 10 migration is still ongoing.

Both Dell and HP reported their latest quarterly numbers with both firms choosing the dwell on the performance of the PC market, which analyst have tracked as being a positive one for those selling hardware into business customers.

At Dell, Tom Sweet, CFO at the vendor, told analysts on a conference call discussing the firm's Q3 numbers that the client solutions group saw double digit growth in notebooks, desktops and workstations.

"Overall, we continue to be pleased with the business trajectory and relative performance and we'll continue to focus on relative growth and improving profitability through pricing and go to market execution around product mix and attach," he said.

His colleague Jeff Clarke, vice chairman, products and operations at Dell, said that there were some issues with exchange rates and "supply chain challenges" but it had been able to out perform the market.

"Looking at the broader PC industry, unit growth was 0.2% for calendar Q3 according to IDC. Dell significantly outperformed the worldwide industry growing units 5.8% in calendar Q3, delivering above industry growth in desktops, notebooks and in total commercial PCs," he said.

He added that those hoping that the push for customers to upgrade was continuing: "We continue to believe the industry is in a Windows 10 refresh cycle".

Over at HP the firm's CEO Dion Weisler was also upbeat about its PC business performance in its Q4 earnings.

"Personal Systems continue to deliver impressive profitable growth both in the fourth quarter and for the full-year. In Quarter 4, revenue and operating profit grew 11%. For the full-year, revenue grew 13% and operating profit grew even faster at 17%, adding more than $200m to the bottom line," he told analysts.

HP has been taking a hardware managed service approach with Desktop as a Service and Weisler said that was tapping into a market need.

"We’re also continuing to accelerate our growth pillar with Device as a Service. 60% of IT organizations tell us their resources are increasingly taxed by device management and 80% of their costs are coming after the PC is purchased. HP DaaS uses data and analytics to reduce costs and optimize the experience for IT and for end users," he said.

But like those executives at Dell, he also stressed that ongoing supply chain issues were having an impact it signaled that it was working to ease the problems.

"We are monitoring several evolving market dynamics, including the global trade environment and currency volatility. In addition, our caution related to industry-wide CPU availability is now playing out and is constraining our growth. We are working diligently with our vendors and partners to reduce the short-term impacts on our customers in light of our ongoing strong demand," he added.