Analyst firm Canalys predicts the PC market in Western Europe has bottomed out for the first quarter of 2023. Q1 declined by 3% year on year in the first quarter of 2023, reaching 14.6 million units. The company predicts sales will continue to dip through 2023 but the market will start to recover in 2024 as new purchase delays ease.
Furthermore, early next year is when the major migration of businesses upgrading to Windows 11 is forecast to happen.
During 2022, Canalys reports that PC shipments in Western Europe fell 38% year-on-year during Q4 to 10.7 million. Notebooks fell the most, down 40%, while desktops slipped 29%. Tablets also declined by 17% during the fourth quarter.
As for 2022 as a whole, the firm reports that PC shipments fell 21% and tablet shipments 18%.
The report attributes the decline to several factors, such as supply chain disruptions, component shortages, rising prices, geopolitical tensions and changing consumer behavior. However, it also notes that the decline was less severe than expected and that the market has bottomed out in terms of demand.
Is a PC Market Recovery Coming to Europe?
Canalys expects the PC market to recover gradually in the coming quarters. The report also highlights some positive trends in the PC market, such as the growth of gaming PCs, premium devices and workstations, which offer higher margins and customer loyalty.
“Despite heavy discounting, consumer PC shipments to the region fell 27% between Q3 and Q4 last year. A substantial sequential drop for the holiday quarter underscores both the impact the current economic situation is having on demand and the extent to which inventories have bloated. However, it’s also important to keep in mind how saturated the market became over the course of the pandemic. From Q2 2020, Western Europe posted eight consecutive quarters with consumer PC shipment volumes that were higher than in the holiday quarter of 2019.
Meanwhile, commercial demand waned as businesses faced further pressure from interest rate hikes by the ECB, which have continued in the early months of 2023. Prioritizing budgets away from IT investment has halted the momentum of PC shipments that had started to pick up after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted.”
The report also provides a breakdown of the PC market by country and vendor. The UK was the only major country to record positive growth in Q1 2023, with a 7% increase in shipments. Germany and France saw modest declines of 2% and 4%, respectively, while Italy and Spain suffered more significant drops of 9% and 12%, respectively.
Lenovo and HP were the top two vendors in Western Europe, with very similar market shares of around 25%. Both saw slight annual shipment declines but remain strong, together accounting for half the region’s shipments. Dell was the third-largest vendor, with a 14% market share and a 4% decline in shipments. Apple and Acer ranked fourth and fifth, with 9% and 8% market shares, respectively, and both recorded growth of 6%.
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