Worldwide PC shipments totaled 71.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015 (4Q15), a year-on-year decline of -10.6%, says market watcher International Data Corporation.

IDC’s Quarterly PC Tracker revealed 2015 ended as the first year below 300 million units since 2008.

The fourth quarter achieved a modest uptick with Christmas sales compared to the third quarter, but the year-on-year decline in 2015 shipments was the largest in history, surpassing the decline of -9.8% in 2013.

The 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.

However, economic issues like falling commodity prices and weak international currencies, as well as social disruptions in EMEA and Asia/Pacific that disrupted foreign markets were a larger factor for 2015.

Loren Loverde , IDC Vice President, Worldwide PC Tracker, said: "PC replacements should pick up again in 2016, particularly later in the year. Commercial adoption of Windows 10 is expected to accelerate, and consumer buying should also stabilize by the second half of the year. Most PC users have delayed an upgrade, but can only maintain this for so long before facing security and performance issues. We continue to believe that a majority of these users will purchase another PC, motivated by new products and attractive pricing."

"Consumer sentiment toward PCs remains a challenge, though clearly there are pockets of growth," said Jay Chou , Research Manager, IDC Worldwide PC Tracker. "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."

Detachable tablets, which are counted separately from PCs, are growing quickly but from a small base. Adding those units to PC shipments would boost growth by roughly 6 percentage points in the fourth quarter and 3 percentage points for all of 2015, bringing year-on-year growth for 4Q15 to a decline of about -5% and -7.5% for all of 2015. The impact for 2016 will be larger as detachable tablet volume grows, boosting earlier forecasts of PC growth in 2016 from -3.1% to growth of 1 to 2%.

Regional Highlights
Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) – As forecast, EMEA witnessed another quarter of double-digit year-over-year decline in PC shipments, as 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. The late availability of PCs based on Skylake architecture delayed some purchases while IT budgets suffered from economic instability and currency volatility.
United States – HP retained its lead in the U.S. PC market with a 28.1% share, while Dell held the second position with a 23.9% share. Apple, which continues to buck the trend of an eroding consumer PC market, leveraged the consumer-heavy holiday season to retake third place with a 12.7% share. Lenovo continued its aggressive growth trajectory. Its 21.3% year-over-year growth (to 2.2 million units shipped) was by far the strongest growth rate of all vendors. However, it was not enough to overcome a strong Apple performance as Lenovo fell to fourth. The quarter also saw a new entrant into the top five: ASUS rode 11.0% year-over-year growth to a 7.1% share to overtake Toshiba and Acer.

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ) – The APeJ PC market posted a year-on-year decline with shipments affected by weak consumer demand and high inventory levels in the channels. Currency fluctuations 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.
Japan – The market performed better than forecast and posted solid year-over-year growth, however a weaker Yen, high inventory, and lack of Windows 10 marketing continued to constrain PC sales.

Vendor Highlights
Lenovo maintained its top rank for the quarter and all of 2015, exceeding 20% market share for the year. Shipments reached nearly 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter, mostly due to strong volume in North America.

HP was the number 2 vendor, slightly outperforming the market although its volume declined across regions.

Dell remained the number 3 vendor at nearly 10.2 million units with above-market performance in the U.S.

ASUS outperformed the market and moved into the number 4 position. With nearly 6 million units and 7.9% market share, this was the best quarter for ASUS since 2012. Strong sales in Asia/Pacific boosted the growth.

Apple effectively tied* ASUS for the number 4 position in the fourth quarter, but was clearly ahead on an annual basis. The company continued its strong run and outperformed the market, increasing its share globally to 7.9% for the quarter and 7.5% for the year.