PC shipments see biggest decline ever recorded

PC shipments fell by more than 28% year-on-year in 2022’s fourth quarter, according to reports from Gartner and IDC.

The drop marks the most significant decline ever recorded by Gartner, which has been monitoring the PC market since the mid-1990s.

While the market as a whole suffered from a significant decline in demand, certain manufacturers were harder hit than others.

The top PC manufacturer in the world — Lenovo — saw its shipments decline by 28.5% year-on-year, with the biggest faller being Dell, with a drop of 37.2%.

HP is the second-ranked PC company worldwide, and its shipments were 29% lower in Q4 2022 than in the same period last year.

Apple sits in fourth place, and while it also observed a decline in shipments, the drop was slight compared to the other companies listed.

It shipped around 200,000 fewer units in Q4 2022 than in Q4 2021. This works out to a shipment decline of about 2.1%.

Overall, Q4 shipments dropped from 93.5 million units in 2021 to 67.2 million in 2022.

The drop-off in PC shipments isn’t surprising. The global technology industry is among the hardest hit by slow economic growth and high inflation in 2022, which weighed heavily on consumers and businesses, resulting in more conservative spending.

The table below compares shipments and the market share values of the top five PC manufacturers worldwide in Q4 2022 and Q4 2021 based on IDC data. Shipments are in millions of units.

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