PC shipments in Western Europe fell by 19.8 percent

Research firm Gartner reports sales of PCs in Western Europe fell by 19.8 percent year-over-year in Q2 2013. A total of 10.94 million PCs were sold that quarter, versus 13.64 million the year before. HP was the biggest PC shipper with a marketshare of 20.8 percent but didn't do to well as it saw its sales decline by 17.4 percent. Acer managed to cling on to the second spot, despite seeing its shipments collapse by 44.70 percent, while Lenovo did extremely well - the Chinese PC maker increased its sales by 18.9 percent in this declining market and managed to capture the third position in the chart.

Dell didn't do too shabby either, it managed to increase its marketshare from 8.7 percent to 10.7 percent as its shipments declined by a mere 1.10 percent, while ASUS suffered from a 41.70 percent collapse in shipments. More details and a breakdown for the UK, France and Germany can be found over here.

PC shipments in Western Europe totaled 10.9 million units in the second quarter of 2013, a decline of 19.8 percent compared with the same period in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc..

"The market exit of the netbook PC, and vendors reducing their inventory to get the new Intel chips and Windows 8.1 have fuelled the decline in Western Europe," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner.

All PC segments in Western Europe declined. Mobile and desktop PC shipments declined 23.9 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively. PC shipments in the professional market declined 13.5 percent, while the consumer PC market decreased 25.8 percent in the second quarter of 2013.

Despite a 17.4 percent decline in shipments, HP remained in the No. 1 position. Acer exhibited the worst performance of the top five vendors with a decline of 44.7 percent in the second quarter of 2013. Most of Acer's decline came from shifting its portfolio away from netbooks to Android tablets. Lenovo had another strong quarter and moved to the No. 3 position, only 47,000 PC units behind Acer. Lenovo was the only top 10 vendor to exhibit double-digit growth (18.9 percent) in the second quarter of 2013. Dell exhibited the slowest decline in the past 12 months. "Dell’s improvement is attributed to its strategic shift from profitability protection to market share gain," said Ms. Escherich.

"We can expect some attractive new PCs in the stores for the fourth quarter of 2013, running Windows 8.1 with thinner form factors and longer battery life enabled by Intel's Haswell processors," said Ms Escherich. "These PCs will compete with high-end tablets and will be complemented by a new generation of Atom-based devices that will compete with low-end basic tablets."Although this will not fully compensate for the ongoing PC decline, it does create an opportunity for profit in the midrange and more high end PC segments."