According to a report from IDC, the number of PC’s shipped in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region declined 10.7% during the fourth quarter of 2012 , due to a decrease in consumer and commercial demand.
Total shipment during the full year was 105.6 million units, down 1.6%, over last year, while shipments of portable PCs during the year remained flat, with while desktop shipments seeing a decline of 2.9%.
IDC EMEA Personal Computing senior research analyst, Maciej Gornicki , said that as expected, PC sales remained constrained across EMEA in Q4 2012 as consumer demand shifted to tablets during the holiday season.
The launch of the newly designed Windows 8 did not provide the anticipated upward trend.
"As a result, notebook sales continued to display negative trends in the last quarter of the year, with EMEA portable PC shipments declining 12.8% in Q4 2012," Gornicki said.
Sales in Western Europe declined 12.5% compared with the fourth quarter last year, while Russia, the Middle East and Africa reported respective declines of 13.6%.
According to the research firm, tablets continued to be a disrupting factor during the quarter, while macro-economic conditions had ahigher impact on both consumer and commercial markets.
IDC EMEA Personal Computing research manager Chrystelle Labesque said: "Retailers and distributors across the region remained cautious when taking new orders in order to avoid any inventory build-up fearing weak consumer sales during Christmas and anticipating on Windows 8 transition."
During Q4 2012, HP topped the list of vendors with a 19.5% share in PC shipments, followed by Lenovo, Acer Group, ASUS and Dell.
IDC CEMA research director Stefania Lorenz said that the PC market in the Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (CEMA) region reported an overall decline of 8% year on year in Q4 2012.
"Both regions witnessed weakness in the markets due to inventory and economic slowdown as well as the continual political unrest in the Middle East and Africa," Lorenz said.
"The CEE region reported annual contraction of -14% driven by the decline coming from Russia, as the inventory levels have been unrealistically high with the large shipments witnessed in the last 2 quarters.
"The Middle East and Africa is slightly in a better position with -1% year-on-year decline. Demand in the notebook segment has been slow in MEA due to the popularity of tablets in the region. In addition, the newly launched Microsoft Windows 8 was not able to lift demand across the regions."
