Dell leads declining PC monitor market

Dell remains in the top spot the head of the global PC monitor market, experiencing solid year-over-year growth in a declining market.

According to IDC, the global PC monitor market shipped more than 29 million units in the first quarter of 2016, a 0.5% increase from the year before, but a 5.7% decrease from the previous quarter.

Dell remained the leading vendor in the market for 1Q16, with worldwide market share of 16.8% on shipments of over 4.9 million units. The vendor posted strong year-over-year growth in Central - Eastern Europe (56.4%) and Canada (20.6%).

"IDC expects the global monitor market will continue to decline at rates around 3% year over year from 2018 through 2020," comments Maura FitzGerald, senior research analyst.

"However, there should be some pockets of growth along the way, as illustrated by the Middle East - Africa region, which experienced its second sequential gain in a row, recording 3.8% quarter-over-quarter growth in 1Q16," she says.

IDC currently forecasts 114 million PC monitor units will be shipped for full year 2016 and expects to see a year-over-year decline of 7.4% in worldwide shipments to 27.1 million units in the first quarter of 2017.

By 2020, worldwide shipments are expected to be less than 100 million units as the adoption of mobile devices at lower price points is expected to continue.

At vendor level, HP saw 3.4 million units shipped, resulting in 11.7% share in 1Q16. Year-over-year unit increases of 15.1% in USA and 7.3% in Western Europe helped bring the vendor a total year-over-year increase of 1.6%.

Samsung weakened its top 3 position with a year-over-year decline of 13.9% to 3.2 million units shipped, according to IDC. While the vendor showed year-over-year declines across all regions, they did see significant year-over-year growth in the 31.5-inches wide and 27-inches wide segments.

LG continued to rank number four with nearly 3 million units shipped. The vendor witnessed year-over-year gains in all regions except Central - Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

AOC rounded out the Top 5 in 1Q16 with 8.8% market share in the worldwide market, the analysis shows. The vendor logged huge year-over-year gains in Central - Eastern Europe, Japan, Middle East - Africa, USA, and Western Europe.

Technology Highlights

• The presence of Curved monitors is on the rise, with 1.2% market share in 1Q16. This represents year-over-year growth of 495%.
• Of the top 10 screen sizes, 23.8-inches wide and 31.5-inches wide saw the largest year-over-year growth, posting 91.4% and 183.2%, respectively, in 1Q16.
• Monitors with TV tuners are expected to grow 1.3% year-over-year to 5.7% market share in 2017, up from 5.1% in 2015, led by LG and Samsung with a combined market share of 99.0% in this category.