Apple Achieves Record Growth Amid Slow Recovery in Global PC Market: Report

The latest Canalys data reveals that the global PC market decline slowed in Q2 2023, with total shipments of desktops and notebooks down 11.5% year on year to 62.1 million units versus two consecutive quarters where shipments declined by over 30%. 

The second quarter volume represents a sequential shipment growth of 11.9%, hinting that the market is on track for accelerated recovery in the second half of 2023. 

Notebook shipments were down 9.3% annually, while desktops faced a decline of 19.3%. 

The PC market is showing early signs of a bounce back following a difficult period, said Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys. 

He expects businesses to reallocate dormant spending toward IT upgrades as conditions improve. In Q2 2023, the public sector funding recovery helped fuel strong back-to-school demand for PCs.

Positive market signals suggest a further improvement for the PC industry in 2023, said Kieren Jessop, Research Analyst at Canalys. 

All customer segments will likely improve sequentially for 2023 amid a final push of inventory corrections and stronger seasonality in the latter half of the year. 

However, full-year 2023 shipments will be lower than in 2022 as consumers relegate spending on PCs behind other categories in a post-pandemic environment.

Lenovo Group Ltd LNVGY continued to lead the worldwide PC market but underwent a significant shipment decline of 18% year on year, dropping to 14.2 million units. Second-placed HP Inc HPQ enjoyed a strong quarter, aided by healthy Chromebook sales in the U.S. It posted a flat performance by shipping 13.4 million units globally. 

Dell Technologies Inc DELL maintained third place but lost over two points of market share as its shipments declined 22%. 

Apple Inc AAPL achieved the highest growth among the major vendors in Q2 2023, with shipments up 51% year on year. While it was boosted by the launch of the new 15-inch Macbook Air, its strong performance was driven mainly by a favorable comparison quarter due to the supply chain disruption it faced in 2022. 

Price Action: AAPL shares traded lower by 0.57% at $187.61 on the last check Tuesday.