IDC’ latest report said that Acer (TPE: 2353) and Asus (TPE: 2357), two of Taiwan’s major computer makers, continued to lose ground to bigger rivals in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions during the fourth quarter last year, despite strong consumer demand over the holiday season.
“PC manufacturers prepared very attractive consumer offers this Christmas, with low price points supported by Windows 8.1 with the Bing edition, which enticed end users to renew their devices,” said Maciek Gornicki, a senior research analyst for IDC. “With the conditions of the promotion about to change, inventories have been built up this quarter, contributing further to higher levels of stock in the supply chain, which might translate into a deceleration in consumer shipments in the first half of 2015.”
IDC said that PC shipments in these regions increased by 2% year-on-year to 25.5 million units in the last three months last year. Acer was ranked as the fourth brand name PC maker among them with a 9.7% market share and recorded an annual shipment decline of 2.5% year-on-year, in part due to a high comparison base over the same period of 2013.
Asus, meanwhile, continued to grow aggressively in the desktop market from a low comparison base, but the company’s success in the tablet market seems to have come at the expense of portable PC shipments, which contracted slightly, IDC said.
IDC’s report showed that Asus’ PC shipments in the markets of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa declined 3.3% year-on-year, giving it an 8.6% market share and ranking it in the fifth place.
In the meantime, IDC said that the top three PC vendors all gained market share. HP (NYSE: HPQ) remained the biggest player, with a 23.3% share of the market, followed by Lenovo (SWX: LEN) with 19.6% and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) with 9.8%.
