(R. Chandrasekaran) The world's largest PC shipper Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) has improved its quarter-over-quarter PC shipment market share in Asia/Pacific, excluding Japan, in the first quarter. However, on a year-over-year basis, the company shed market share.
Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) has more worries as it lost share sequentially as well as year-on-year. Significantly, its overall PC shipment witnessed sequential downside; however, it registered 3 percent growth over the year-ago quarter.
Lenovo retained the top PC shipper tag in Asia/Pacific region despite losing market share sequentially. The company's shared slipped to 21.8 percent share from 25.0 percent in the fourth quarter as seasonality slowed demand in China, but improved from year-over-year's18.1 percent as a result of 24 percent upside, data from International Data Corp. suggests.
The latest data come on the heels of HP maintaining its top PC shipper status, and improving its PC shipment by 3.2 percent ahead of industry's average of around 2.3 percent.
Acer is next in line with a healthy market share of 12.0 percent compared to 11.7 percent in the fourth quarter and 9.8 percent in 2011's first quarter. HP, which remained in the second slot last year, is now relegated to third position with a market share of 9.1 percent. Sequentially, the technology bellwether could improve its share from 7.9 percent, but year-on-year, its share dipped from 10.8 percent.
Similarly, Dell, which held the third position, is now pushed down to the fourth slot with a share of 9.0 percent versus 10.4 percent in the fourth quarter and 9.9 percent in the previous year quarter.
Asus recorded 40 percent growth in PC shipment and improved its market share to 8.2 percent in the first quarter from 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter and 6.0 percent in 2011 first quarter.
The overall PC shipment market witnessed a two percent fall from the fourth quarter of 2011. However, the PC shipments witnessed 3 percent growth to 29.4 million units from the year-ago quarter.
Generally, PC shipments in Asia/Pacific, barring Japan, was in line with IDC expectations. Hard disk drive (HDD) short supply had its share of impact, but the situation seemed to improve towards the close of the first quarter, especially in the ASEAN region.
The expectation is that HDD supply will ease in the second quarter and its pricing will also stabilize towards the end of this quarter. Yet, there are some risks with the uncertain economic conditions and channel inventory. Still, there are public sector projects and new platforms such as Windows 8 and Ultranotebooks that have the potential to push PC shipments higher in the remaining three quarters of 2012.