Western Europe PC market down 20%

The personal computer market in Western Europe continued to shrink last quarter, with two of Taiwan's biggest computer vendors reporting the sharpest decline, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.

PC shipments in Western Europe stood at 10.9 million units in the second quarter of 2013, a fall of 19.8 per cent against the same period of 2012, Gartner said in a research report.

Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner said, the market exit of the notebook PC and vendors reducing their inventories had fuelled the decline in Western Europe.

Taiwan's Acer Inc came in as the second-largest PC maker in the region with an 11.9 per cent market share, however its shipments fell 44.7 per cent from a year earlier -- the worst performance of the top five vendors -- to 1.3 million units.

According to Gartner Acer's decline was mostly attributable to a shift in its portfolio away from netbooks to Android tablets.

Fifth-place Asustek Computer Inc, which made a comeback to the ranking since the fourth quarter of last year, also saw a sharp yearly decline of 41.7 per cent in PC shipments in Western Europe, with the Taiwanese firm shipping only 850,000 units during the second quarter.

Meanwhile, Gartner in a warning to PC vendors claimed it was ''make or break'' time for the industry as Q2 shipment levels across western Europe slumped.

According to the analysts, the market exit of the netbook PC and vendors cutting their inventory in order to wait for the new Intel chips and Windows 8.1 machines fuelled the slump with only 10.9 million devices shipped over the period.

Among the top five PC vendors in the region, three Hewlett-Packard Co, Acer Inc and Asus - suffered double-digit annual declines in Q2, with the vendors' shipments falling 17.4 per cent, 44.7 per cent and 41.7 per cent, respectively. Dell Inc's shipment level shrank just 1.1 per cent over the quarter with Lenovo the only vendor report growth year on year, upping its shipment level 18.9 per cent.

All PC segments declined across western Europe, with mobile and desktop PC shipments shrinking year on year by 23.8 per cent and 12.2 per cent respectively, and shipments in the professional market taking a 13.5 per cent dive as against last year.

According to Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal the PC market was pinning its hopes on Windows 8.1 to lift the market.