Commercial PC demand continuing in Q3
Context has taken an early look at how PC sales have fared in early Q3 and found that things are looking good for those selling hardware
Dell's results last week indicated that the commercial PC market had been bouyant in the first half of the year and there are already indications that trend is continuing in the hardware market in Q3.
According to Context the start of the third quarter has seen the established pattern of demand in the commercial market remaining strong but also the weakness at the consumer end is continuing.
Sales of PCs through Western European distributors increased by 8% year-on-year in July with the commercial sector up by 15%.
In the UK the figure commercial PC sales improved by 10.8% but there was a similar fall on the consumer side, which was down by 10.9%.
Most of those sales are being driven by upgrades with customers looking to get themselves on a more recent OS before Windows 7 support is switched off in January.
Desktop sales were up by 25% in July and notebooks also improved y-o-y by 11%. Workstations also saw increases.
On the consumer side the challenges continued with weak demand leading to a 2% drop in sales with notebooks in particular not clicking with customers. Some areas did see improvements with ultra-slim portables and chromebooks being popular, but the volumes of those products are not large enough to reverse the overall trend.
For the rest of this year the expectation is that the current features of the market will support more commercial sales.
“It is expected that commercial demand will remain strong throughout the second half of 2019 as migration to Windows 10 continues”, said Marie-Christine Pygott, senior analyst at Context.
“While a range of promotional activities during the upcoming back-to-school and Black Friday periods are likely to lead to a temporary improvement in the consumer growth trend, overall demand is expected to remain soft," she added.
