What They Say
IDC and Gartner agreed that Q4 was strong in the PC market, but disagreed over the scale. IDC said that Q4 was 26.1% up on 2019, at 91.6 million units, while Gartner has the market at 79.4 million, up 10.7%. For the year, Gartner was at 275 million, while IDC saw 302 million. The firms disagreed about the total sales for each brand and that was spread across the brands. Although the ‘Others’ data was different by nearly 20 million, that was because Gartner publishes a top 6, including Asus with 16.4 million sales for the year, whereas IDC stops at listing the top 5 brands in its press release.
Both analysts see the top five as Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer, in that order for the quarter and the year. Apple was the big winner for the quarter and the year, although Lenovo was also up well over both time periods.
What We Think
These two analysts usually are more inline with each other than this. Checking their definitions (which could cause a difference in data), they do look the same. Still, it’s great to see the PC market coming back. The world is changing and that may mean that PCs remain compelling products in the future. (BR)
