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Acer shipments fall by half in the UK

By Nicole Kobie

Posted on 17 Aug 2011 at 17:11

PC shipments fell significantly in the UK in the last quarter, according to Gartner - with Acer by far the worst hit.

Compared to the same period in 2010, PCs shipped in the UK fell by 15% to 2.5 million. Gartner includes desktops, laptops and netbooks in its analysis, but treats tablets separately.

Acer shipped 47% fewer PCs, falling from 22.4% market share last year to only 13.9% this year.

“Acer’s decline of nearly 50% in the second quarter pulled down the market further than expected,” said Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner. “Acer had significant inventory that led to its weak performance, but it also prevented other vendors from pushing new shipments into the channel.”

Top PC makers

The top five PC makers by UK market share, according to Gartner:

1) HP (21.6%)

2) Dell (16.6%)

3) Acer (13.9%)

4) Samsung (7.4%)

5) Apple (6.9%)

Acer slid from the first-ranked position in the UK to third, behind HP and Dell. Both of those shipped 10% fewer PCs this quarter. Samsung ranked fourth, with shipments up 5%, while Apple rounded out the top five, up 1%.

PCs continue to struggle as consumers choose to spend their limited budgets on computing alternatives, while businesses aren't migrating to newer machines, according to Gartner. “Most consumers continue to hold back spending on PCs by extending life cycles on existing PCs and purchasing other devices,” Durand said.

Across Western Europe, shipments of desktops were down 15.4%, while netbooks fell 53%. "This quarter's results highlight the ongoing weakness of consumer demand, and could indicate a structural change in the market that threatens to continue in the near future," said Gartner analyst Meike Escherich.

There was some good news: UK shipments fell by almost 4% less than shipments across Western Europe, which slid by 18.9%.

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User comments

Am I being obvious...

...When I state that nearly everyone HAS a pc/laptop at this point in time?

P.s. There's no way in HELL that I'd buy a brand new pc from any of them now that you can get a standard core 2 duo from ebay for £80. Slap in a 40Gb Intel SSD (We already have an Ent licence for Windows/office) for HALF the price of a new machine.

By rhythm on 17 Aug 2011

Tablet take over

With sales of Tablets increasing all the time, these sales are clearly replacing new PCs as items consumers are willing to spend their money on.

OK, Apple's sales of desktops and laptops is increasing by double digits every year so not all PC firms are having problems. Perhaps the rush to Netbooks was a mistake?

Apple's growth in market share will only accelerate if the wider market is falling in size while Apple sells more and more.

By SwissMac on 17 Aug 2011

@rhythm & @SwissMac

Wow, a couple of geniuses. You should get together and form a little club :))
Sorry, but I really hope that this is NOT the representative crowd who reads this magazine.
Sorry, but evolution is not fair

By raritzu on 17 Aug 2011

@raritzu

Ironically, your rude and misguided comment marks you out as far worse than the "culprits" you insult. Ignore.

By gavmeister on 17 Aug 2011

I bet a lot of people upgraded to the orginal iCore chips when they came out and there's been nothing released since then really justify upgrading to sandybridge. Plus with the economy the way it is it's hard to justify spending hundreds of pounds on something you don't 'need'.

As for tablets, nice idea. A cross between the asus transformer and the playbook would be tempting but there's nothing like that out there. One thing driving tablet sales maybe the abilty to effectively buy to let from mobile phone companies.

By JamesD29 on 18 Aug 2011

@rythm

Take a closer look at your licence agreement, Windows Ent normally needs a machine with Win Pro licence...

By big_D on 18 Aug 2011

I love the way you mention Apple shipments being up but forget to note Samsung even higher. You have a warped and biased brain @SwissMac

By TimoGunt on 18 Aug 2011

Its refreshing to see no one company dominating. The top four only make up 60% and the biggest has just over 20%. There doesn't seem to be much danger of any one having a runaway lead any time soon.

By PhilGQ on 18 Aug 2011

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