Higher spending in the consumer segment drove growth in the overall PC market in Australia with Q115 seeing end users migrating back to notebooks from tablet form factors.
According to recent IDC findings for across the Tasman, convertible notebooks, which allow multipurpose usability, were also “especially popular.”
Continuing the growth trend from the Windows XP migration since late 2014, the PC market had a good start in 2015, improving 12 percent year-on-year (YoY) thanks to healthy notebooks sales.
“The currency fluctuation impact on PC sales was minimal as vendors initiated aggressive price promotion campaigns and pushed large volumes of entry-level devices into the market,” says Sagar Raghavendra, Client Devices Analyst, IDC.
“Microsoft’s BingBook program was also a contributing factor to higher notebook shipments.”
Vendor wise, HP maintains the top position with 23 percent market share, followed by Apple and Lenovo with 20 percent and 13 percent respectively.
Raghavendra adds that Lenovo’s foray into the consumer space in Q4 last year has reaped benefits as evidenced by its exponential growth in this segment.
While the consumer segment grew 20 percent YoY, Raghavendra reports that the education segment was on the decline.
“The slowdown in education shipments was likely due to the changing 'Bring Your Own Device' (BYOD) policy,” Raghavendra adds.
“With product purchases now decentralised in several private education institutions, parents, not schools, are buying notebooks for their children.
“The enterprise segment posted mixed results with large and very large enterprise shipment declining as part of OPEX cost-cutting. However SMBs, riding on promotional offers, posted steady year-on-year growth.”
