PC Sales 2017 - Another Down Year

PC sales for Q4 2017 were down 2% in 2017 and overall sales for 2017 dropped 2.8% to 262M units...

 This is the 6th consecutive year that PC sales have fallen and while better than the 250M units I estimated for 2017 - the downward trend is still there.  

 The top 3 remain unchanged with HP, Lenovo and Dell maintaining the lion share of the market.  These 3 vendors sold 42M of the 71M units in Q4 or 60.7% market share.  HP and Lenovo are nearly dead even in market share @ 22.5 & 22.0 respectively with Dell @ 15.2%

 Apple, Asus and Acer round out the top 6 and take another 15M units or 20.8% market share.  All are in the 6.6 to 7.6% market share range.

 The remainder fall into the "Others" category that includes folks like Toshiba, Fujitsu, Samsung and MS.  

 And even though the state of the art of the PC is as it's best in terms of CPU, RAM, Disk, Screens, along with form factor, battery life & weight- 2017 will finish some 104M units shy of the nearly 366M units sold in 2011 - that's a nearly 30% drop.   

 We'll probably end 2017 with some 1.7B+ phones sold - so about a 6.5:1 ratio.  Apple or Samsung alone will probably sell more phones than the entire PC Industry..  

 And even with some potential new stars like ARM based PCs from Lenovo, Asus and others and the new Chromebooks and ChromeBox choices - I'm afraid the trend will continue downward.  

 If you assume another 3% drop in 2018 - that will put 2018 in the 254M unit range.  And even with prices rising for some of the higher end units - it may not offset the volume drop.  To me 250M is a tipping point - once we fall below that figure - I think we'll drop quickly to 200M or below..

 As the owner of a Google Pixel 2 XL - I know that I can do effectively everything I do on my PC and then some on my phone and pick it up more often than ever.

 The reality is that we are in a device world and with Amazon signing deals with everyone from refrigerator makers to TVs, Cars, etc - the days of the PC are numbered.   Yes PCs will still sell - and yes folks will still use laptops, etc for business - but the volumes will slowly creep down and more and more of the "Others" will drop out of the business.

 The big 3 will scramble for market share - but it's mostly stealing from each other or the others category.  

 We'll see if there are surprises for 2018 - My guess 252M...



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