IDC has revealed Q42018 data of PC sales across the globe. As per the research, the fourth quarter of 2018 has witnessed a decline of 3.7 percent in year-on-year terms.
Both China and the USA are suffering from a drop in PC sales. The situation is rather worse and is expected to get exacerbated this year while in the USA a back-to-school season could push the sales upward.
The ongoing economic tensions between China and the United States continue to create a lot of uncertainty in the business environment in China. As demand for Chinese products in the U.S. drops, this particularly impacts businesses of all sizes from the manufacturing sector in China, which, in turn, translates to a drop in IT purchases by these companies,” said Maciek Gornicki, research manager with IDC’s Asia/Pacific Client Devices Group. “As a result, the PC market in China is expected to suffer bigger declines throughout the year. And if the trade war escalates further, we should expect spillover of the impact to other countries, particularly due to the expected fluctuations of the exchange rates impacting businesses across the region.”
The downward trend continues even in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Japan, Asia/Pacific.
Among the top PC vendors, Lenovo tops the list as it has the highest shipments in the fourth quarter, followed by HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer. 
Interestingly, it is Dell and not Lenovo that had the strongest year-on-year growth among the top OEMs at 1.6 percent for the quarter. Rest of the PC vendor witnessed a year-on-year decline.
