• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, April 12, 2018

The PC market’s lackluster sales continued in the first quarter of 2018, new data from Gartner Inc. shows, with the U.S. and Asia/Pacific markets suffering the most damage.

Worldwide, shipments were down 1.4%, the 14th consecutive quarter of declining shipments. In the quarter, shipments of PCs declined 3.9% in the Asian region, and 2.9% in the U.S. PC shipments in the U.S. totaled 11.8 million units. 

Gartner earlier has predicted a 5.4% worldwide decline in traditional PC sales for 2018. But it notes that even as sales tighten, prices are going up.

Nearly simultaneously, a report from International Data Corporation was only little slightly more upbeat. It said Q1 shipments of PCs were flat worldwide, actually exceeding IDC’s more dire prediction of a 1.5% decline, year over year. By IDC’s reckoning, this was the third consecutive quarter PC shipments have been flat YOY. It said PC shipments around the world totaled 60.4 million.

Three vendors — HP with 20%, Lenovo, with 19.7% and Dell with 14.8% — accounted for nearly 60% of the world’s global PC shipments, Gartner data concluded. The leading gainer was Dell, whose shipments grew 6.5% YOY. 

In the U.S., Dell, with 29% share of the market, replaced HP, now with 28.4% as the top PC vendor, based on shipments. Dell’s market share increased 7.6% while HP’s dropped 4.8%

Prices aren’t going down, even as the market contracts. “With fewer people buying new machines,” says Mikako Kitagawa, the principal analyst at Gartner, “manufacturers need to get the highest profit margin from each sale. To do that, they are raising the selling points and focusing on customer experience or perception of value.”

While smartphones have dramatically changed the PC market, the recent sales trajectory for them hasn’t been positive either. Gartner earlier forecast smartphone shipments will increase 6.2% this year. But that’s coming on the heels of Q4 2017 decline of 5.6% for smartphones, the first time Gartner has seen a decline in that market since it started tracking it in 2004. 

Gartner blamed that on high consumer expectations for new technological innovations, and subsequent disappointment, and on more consumers buying better phones, lengthening the replacement cycle. New wrinkles like more artificial intelligence and smart assistant improvements should help turn that market upward. But the real boost — new 5G technology — apparently won’t be coming to smartphones until 2019.