IDC Korea reports 6.1% year-over-year growth in domestic PC shipments in the first quarter.
Delayed corporate replacement volumes following Windows XP migration

Domestic PC shipments in the first quarter were tallied at 1.62 million units, a 6.1% increase year-on-year.

According to IDC Korea (CEO Hong Yoo-sook), desktop shipments in the first quarter of 2017 were only 620,000 units, a slight increase of 1.5% year-on-year, while notebook shipments grew by 9.3% to 990,000 units, accounting for 61.3% of the total market.

The growth in laptop sales is attributed not only to increased demand from the consumer sector ahead of the new school year, but also to corporate replacement volume, which had been delayed since the Windows XP migration in 2014, which has been taking place primarily among large corporations since the beginning of this year.

However, despite the growth in notebooks, the consumer sector saw shipments grow by only 1.7% year-on-year to 1.01 million units due to a decline in demand for all-in-ones, while the public sector also saw shipments decline by 2.0% to 90,000 units due to budget cuts. The education sector saw a 24.9% increase in shipments to 100,000 units, driven by replacement of aging desktops. However, this replacement demand is expected to be largely completed in the first half of the year, so a second-half adjustment is expected. In the corporate sector, shipments increased 16.0% to 410,000 units, reflecting a significant increase in laptop adoption for improved work efficiency and productivity.


In particular, the growth of ultra-slim notebooks and gaming PCs is remarkable. Ultra-slim notebooks shipped 680,000 units, a 21.1% year-on-year increase, and account for an overwhelming 69.1% of the notebook market. Gaming PCs, both desktop and notebook, are also increasingly equipped with Nvidia GTX 10xx or AMD Radeon RX external graphics. AMD's launch of Ryzen is expected to intensify competition with Intel, and interest in Intel's 8th-generation Coffee Lake is also growing. In addition, new attempts at gaming continue, such as the emergence of VR-ready products and VR game rooms.

Regarding this phenomenon, Kwon Sang-jun, a senior researcher at IDC Korea, emphasized, "For the small and medium-sized business market, it is important to strengthen collaboration with partners, and for large corporations, differentiation is important by bundling not only PCs but also services and solutions."