IDC Canada recently disclosed its preliminary Q3 PC shipment numbers within its Quarterly PC Tracker. Particularly weak, but better than forecasted demand in Canada brought Q3 growth in at -11.3% YoY. Overall worldwide growth was -10.0% YoY, slightly under forecast.

Tim Brunt, Personal Computing Program Manager for IDC says "Portable PC shipments are becoming the most interesting area to watch. Apple took 19.6% of that market in the quarter before a product refresh. Traditional portable heavyweights HP and Acer saw declines of -20% YoY, but Dell and Lenovo saw gains of 22% and 15.6% YoY respectively. The Canadian PC market is finally starting to emerge from the fog."

Total PC shipments in Canada reached 1,483,786 units for the third quarter. Portable PC shipments continued to slow with -13.0% YoY growth and shipping 989,794 units. Desktop shipments continued their decline at -7.7% YoY, shipping 493,992 units.

Q3 Market Share

Desktop and Portable Growth: HP led in overall shipments with 22.4% share, despite losing 0.4% share points from the same period last year. Apple jumped into the second overall spot with a 15.8% share and up from the fifth spot in Q2. Dell slipped to number three with a 14.3% share, Lenovo held fourth spot with 11.6% and Acer rounded out the top five with 11.4%.

Top 5 Canadian PC Vendors Market Shares and Shipment Growth, Q3-13

Q3-13 Rank    Vendor    Q3-13    %YoY Growth
1    HP    22.4%    -13.1%
2    Apple    15.8%    2.6%
3    Dell    14.3%    4.8%
4    Lenovo    11.6%    11.0%
5    Acer    11.4%    -21.5%
Others    24.6%    -25.7%

Source: IDC Canada, October 2013