Are PC shipments increasing or decreasing? IDC and Gartner data differ

Market research companies IDC and Gartner recently announced global PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2014. Surprisingly, the two data differ so much. IDC said that global PC shipments have begun to decline, down 2.4% from the same period last year, but Gartner has different data, and their PC shipments have increased by 1% compared with the same period last year. This is undoubtedly a huge gap.

Gartner said that global PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014 were 83.7 million units, while IDC said it was 80.8 million. But both companies agree on the fact that shipments are growing in the United States and Europe, especially during the year-end shopping season.

For manufacturers, Lenovo continued to rank first, with shipments exceeding 16 million units. It showed strong growth in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. However, the two companies also had different statistics for Lenovo. IDC said Lenovo's shipments increased by 4.5%, while Gartner said the figure increased by 7.5%.

The two companies also differ in the top five PC manufacturers, with Gartner ranking HP, Dell, Acer and Asus second to fifth, while IDC ranks Apple fifth.

The possible reason for this gap is that IDC does not count tablet/laptop hybrid devices such as Surface Pro 3 when calculating the statistics, but includes Chromebooks; while Gartner counts Windows tablet devices but does not include tablet devices on other platforms such as Chromebooks.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.