Best-selling laptop brands in South Africa
The best-selling laptop brands in South Africa tend to mirror what is observed in the greater African PC market, and shipments to the region declined in the second half of 2022 (H2 2022) and the first quarter of 2023 (Q1 2023).
According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) shipment stats, HP, Dell, and Lenovo hold the highest brand unit shares in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region.
However, their dominance appears to be shifting, with the “Others” category, which includes ASUS, Acer, Apple, and MSI, climbing from a low of 32.80% in H2 2021 to 39.50% in Q1 2023.
“The Middle East and Africa personal computing device market experienced a significant year-on-year decline of 13.0% during the first quarter of 2023,” said the IDC.
Fouad Charakla, IDC associate research director for client devices in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa attributed the decline to a slowdown in demand.
“Due to a slowdown in demand, primarily in the consumer and SMB segments, most channels in the region entered the first quarter of the year with high inventory levels,” said Charakla.
“This prevented them from placing new orders at the same volumes seen during the corresponding quarter of 2022.”
Charakla noted that the only exceptions to the decline were in Turkey and Nigeria, with every other market in the region — including South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt — experiencing significant year-on-year declines.
| MEA PC brand unit shares: 2021 vs 2022 vs Q1 2023 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | H1 2021 | H1 2022 | H2 2021 | H2 2022 | Q1 2023 |
| HP Inc | 20.10% | 23.80% | 23.70% | 22.80% | 24.80% |
| Lenovo | 22.60% | 23.20% | 25.00% | 22.70% | 22.40% |
| Dell Technologies | 16.40% | 18.50% | 18.50% | 15.80% | 13.30% |
| Others | 40.90% | 34.50% | 32.80% | 38.70% | 39.50% |
“PC shipments were down 21.5% year-on-year,” said the IDC.
“The top 3 vendors each experienced sharp declines, although all maintained their positions in the market, with HP Inc., Lenovo, and Dell ranking first, second, and third, respectively.”
Charakla also explained that the decline was already in effect in Q4 2022 but added that this was expected as demand for laptops and desktop PCs is starting to normalise.
“The stark nature of this decline stems largely from the fact that the corresponding quarter of 2021 saw an exceptionally high volume of shipments,” he said.
“This was spurred by the sudden availability of PCs in Q4 2021 after supply shortages had hampered the market for much of the year.”
“The biggest declines were seen in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt,” Charakla added.
Unit shares for laptop and PC vendors in the Middle East and Africa from H1 2021 to Q1 2023, as per the IDC’s data, are provided in the table below.
Local tastes
According to a recently conducted poll on MyBroadband, votes tended to mirror what is shown in the IDC’s data, with HP, Dell, and Lenovo taking the top three spots.
We asked MyBroadband readers about the brand of laptop they owned in mid-June 2023.
The poll accumulated 4,666 votes, of which Dell dominated the responses with 22.74% of the votes. HP received 19.55% of the votes, putting it in second place, while Lenovo scored 17.55%.
Apple laptops weren’t far off of the top three, with 14.32% of respondents saying they owned a MacBook at the time.
Asus landed in fifth place with 9.19% of the votes, with Acer taking a not-too-distant sixth place. The results of the poll are summarised in the chart below.
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