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Johannesburg - Personal computing devices have seen a massive shipment decrease to the Middle East and Africa by 15.2%, year-on-year in the third quarter of 2017, according to the International Data Corporation(IDC).
Fouad Charakla, IDC's senior research manager for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa said that the PC segment which is made of desktops, notebooks, workstations, and tablets, saw poor performance due to the decline of sales in the tablet category, with shipments of both slate and detachable tablets declining rapidly year-on-year.
"Kenya suffered huge declines in its tablet market after a massive education project that boosted shipments in Q3 2016 was not repeated in Q3 2017. There was a near-universal decline in demand for slate tablets across the region, with the exception of IDC's 'Rest of Africa' grouping, where a large education project was delivered in Ethiopia," Charakla said.
HP, Lenovo and Dell still hold the top positions, respectively according the IDC’s insights into PC shipments.
In the tablet space, Samsung experienced the biggest year-on-year gain in share among the market leaders of 3.7%.
Lenovo cemented second place in the overall market following its involvement in the aforementioned education project in Ethiopia. Huawei lost some share, while Apple and TCL both reported notable gains.
"A slowdown in government initiatives and commercial projects, as well as weak-to-modest consumer spending, will ensure the region's PCD market closes 2017 with a significant overall decline," said Charakla.
"However, a number of very large education projects are anticipated for the UAE, Pakistan, and Ethiopia, and these will act as short-term drivers of demand, helping to cushion the fall in coming quarters.
"Looking further ahead, PCD shipments overall are expected to continue declining over the next few years as users continue to shift from one PCD category to another and increasingly embrace technologies beyond the PCD market, such as smartphones.
"The impact of these developments will be most notable in the slate tablet market, with IDC expecting this category to suffer the region's most severe volume declines in the years leading up to 2021," Charakla added.
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