The analyst firm Canalys reported that PC shipments in the US fell more slowly during the second quarter compared to the same period last year. The category, which includes desktop computers, notebook computers and workstations, decreased by 6% compared to the year with 18.2 million units.

The company stated that notebooks, which include mobile workstations, decreased by 4% to 15.2 million shipments. A steeper decline was avoided due to the return of Chromebook demand in the education sector.

Things weren’t so good for desktop PCs which saw a steeper decline with a 12% year-over-year decline to 3.0 million units. Canalys also noted that the US tablet market saw a 5% decline during the second quarter to 10.3 million units.

Commenting on the data, Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst at Canalys said:

“Despite another year-over-year decline, the US PC market showed promising signs of improvement in the second quarter. With the backlog of channel inventory now largely cleared, pockets of demand strength are now being reflected in the delivery performance of suppliers.

A key area that helped increase volumes was the return of demand from educational institutions, backed by the latest wave of federal funding, before the increase in licensing costs for ChromeOS. This helped propel Chromebook shipments to 4.7 million units, the highest level since the peak of deployment during the first half of 2021.’

According to the data, PC shipments in the commercial sector fell by only 4% year over year. Meanwhile, there was a 10% drop in the consumer sector. The analyst said that we probably won’t see a recovery in the consumer market until the fourth quarter when products are discounted for the holidays.

In terms of brands, no one at all would be surprised to hear that the company with the biggest growth in PC shipments was Apple. It has seen year-on-year growth of 32.6% thanks to its cult following and the higher spending power of many of its customers.

Acer was hit the hardest, seeing its growth decline by 20.3%. In the second quarter of 2022 it held 14.6% of the market share, but in the second quarter of 2023 it dropped to 11.9%. The company with the highest market share was HP with 26.5%, it also saw modest annual growth of 6.0%.

Among tablets, Apple was the only company to register growth. It increased its market share from 41.3% in the second quarter of 2022 to 52.2% in the second quarter of 2023 with an annual growth of 20.1%.

source: Canalys