Global PC shipments grew 1.5 pc to 63 mn units in Q2: Gartner

After two quarters of decline, the global PC market grew 1.5 per cent year-on-year in April-June 2019 with shipments totalling about 63 million units, data from research firm Gartner showed.

The worldwide shipment was at about 62 million units in the second quarter of 2018, Gartner said in its preliminary results for April-June 2019.

"Worldwide PC shipments' growth was driven by demand from the Windows 10 refresh in the business market in the second quarter of 2019. Desktop PC growth was strong, which offset a decline in mobile PC shipments," Gartner senior principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said.

She added that additionally, there are signs that the Intel CPU shortage is easing, which has been an ongoing impact to the market for the past 18 months.

The shortage mainly impacted small and midsize vendors as large vendors took advantage and continued to grow, taking market share away from the smaller vendors that struggled to secure CPUs, she said.

Gartner cautioned that the ongoing trade dispute - and potential imposition of tariffs - add uncertainty to the near-term outlook for PC demand.

"While the US-China trade war did not impact the PC market in the second quarter of 2019, the next phase of tariffs could have significant impact. Most laptops and tablets are currently manufactured in China and sales of these devices in the US could face significant price increases if the punitive tariffs are imposed and vendors do not take quick action to respond," Kitagawa said.

Lenovo led the tally with 25 per cent share, followed by HP (22.2 per cent), Dell (16.9 per cent), Apple (5.9 per cent), Acer (5.4 per cent) and Asus (4.9 per cent) in the second quarter of 2019.