14 January 2016•Update: 17 January 2016
ANKARA
Shipments of new PCs declined in the Middle East in 2015, as most companies were engaged in making the switch to Windows 10 from Windows 8, according to a report published this week by researcher International Data Corporation (IDC).
The Middle East and Europe saw double-digit drops in shipment volumes from the previous year, the report said.
“Vendors remained engaged in clearing out the older inventories of Windows 8. The launch of new products with Windows 10 supported holiday season business, but did not reverse the negative trend,” according to the report.
“Consumer sentiment toward PCs remains a challenge, though clearly there are pockets of growth,” said Jay Chou, a research manager at IDC. “Even as mainstream desktop and notebooks see their lifetimes stretched ever longer, Apple's emergence as a top 5 global PC vendor in 2015 shows that there can be strong demand for innovative, even premium-priced systems that put user experience first.”
IT budgets in both regions suffered economic instability and currency volatility, the report said.
Worldwide PC shipments totaled 71.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a year-on-year decline of 10.6 percent, IDC said.
“The global PC market continued to face persistent challenges from longer PC lifecycles and competition from mobile phones and tablets, despite the slowing growth in those markets,” the report added.
Shipments had surged in 2014, the report noted, as promotions of low-cost PCs drove a wave of replacements.
In 2015, the late availability of PCs based on Intel’s new Skylake range of processers delayed some purchases, while IT budgets suffered from economic instability and currency volatility, the report said.
The Asia Pacific market posted a year-on-year decline with shipments affected by weak consumer demand and high inventory levels in the reseller channels, according to the report.
“Currency fluctuations in the region contributed to an increase in pricing and effectively softer sales, while end users continued to focus their spending on other consumer devices. The market was particularly soft in India, where floods and weak demand during festival season contributed to low sales of PCs in the consumer space,” the report said.
The U.S. PC market fell 4.3 percent in 2015 from 2014 to 17.4 million units.
Although the dollar has been strengthening in lieu of currency crises in other regions, U.S. consumers are not immune to economic concerns that have persisted globally, the report said.
