TECHnalysis Research Blog Extra

July 15, 2016
US PC Market Shows Improvement

By Bob O'Donnell

After years of bad news and sales declines, PC shipment growth in the US finally turned positive in second calendar quarter, as both Gartner and IDC reported modest increases in US PC shipments. Worldwide shipments were still down for the quarter in the 4.5% range, primarily because of ongoing challenges in many emerging markets, but the return to positive growth in the US is highly welcome news for the often maligned PC business. Credit has been given to strong Chromebook shipments to the US education markets as a key factor, but I believe we’re also starting to see the impact of Windows 10-driven PC upgrades for commercial PC customers.

Many organizations (and consumers) chose to do in-place, software only upgrades to Windows 10—a phenomenon that never really happened with previous Windows releases—and that muted the originally higher expectations for the new OS. However, Microsoft’s free upgrade policy for Win10, combined with essentially no new hardware requirements from either Windows 7 or Windows 8-based PCs, made it much easier to do than before. Nevertheless, many commercial organizations who want to take advantage of Windows Hello’s biometric authentication support, as well as other traditional speeds-and-feeds hardware improvements, are now starting to make the kinds of large-scale fleet upgrades that many in the industry had expected (or at least hoped) would happen earlier.

The good news is, this provides credibility to the thought that PCs would bottom out and then turn around, unlike their tablet brethren, which continue to decline. Worldwide sales improvement is still elusive, primarily due to the economic challenges that many nations are still facing, but at least there now seems to be both hope and light at the end of the PC sales tunnel.

Here's a link to the original column: https://techpinions.com/unpacked-for-friday-july-15th-2016/46562(Subscription required)

Bob O’Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a market research firm that provides strategic consulting and market research services to the technology industry and professional financial community. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.