Australian PC market up 2.2% in 2017Q4

Shipments of traditional PCs in Australia — including desktops, notebooks and workstations — totalled 1.16 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 2.2%, according to IDC’s Quarterly Personal Computing Devices Tracker.

This was slightly higher than the worldwide PC market’s growth of 0.5% YoY.

The market was led by major education deployments, including public and private schools, with the sector growing by 56.6% YoY.

HP and Acer, traditionally dominant in this sector, faced competition from Lenovo this year, which grabbed a 22.7% share, compared to 11.5% at the same time last year.

Government and enterprise sectors posted growth rates of 11.5% and 2.3% YoY respectively, while SMBs declined by 23.7% YoY, despite federal government tax benefits.

“The small and medium business segment continues to sweat assets after the Windows 10 free OS update; the option of having a flexible device refresh rate, unlike global enterprise accounts that mostly have a fixed refresh rate, is impacting the SMB segment,” said Sagar Raghavendra, client devices analyst at IDC Australia.

IDC’s quarterly report noted that consumer segment was relatively flat year on year.

“Hype around Amazon Australia, which launched in December, did little to improve consumer spending; the market, however, did well in the gaming segment, with AMD’s Ryzen continuing to do well in the white-box category,” said Raghavendra.

The notebook market grew by 2.3% YoY.

“Chromebooks grew by 67.2% YoY, the majority of which came from the education segment. The uptake of Chromebooks is expected to increase in 2018,” noted Raghavendra.

“The market also continues to shift to higher price bands as convertible and ultraslim form factors take over from traditional notebooks.”

Desktop PCs grew by just 0.7% YoY, driven by gaming enthusiasts.

Pictured: The top 5 traditional PC makers, by 2017Q4 Australian market share.

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