Global laptop market growth stunted by Intel chip shortage in 2018, according to latest figures

42.68 million laptops were shipped in the third quarter of 2018. This sounds impressive, but is also less than analysts predicted at the start of the year. They expected a growth of up to 6% in quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth; however, this number is now estimated to be only 3.9%. These figures have been released in the latest report on the worldwide laptop market by TrendForce.

According to this report, fourth-quarter shipments are to drop by 1.9%, despite the fact that TrendForce anticipates it will be a busy time for laptop manufacturers. This negative trend is primarily linked to (surprise surprise) the Intel chip supply crisis. The TrendForce laptop analyst, Kou-Han Tseng, also expects it to continue to impact on product availability into the first half of 2019.

Tseng also believes that new clauses in the US-China trade-war tariffs will apply to laptops. The restrictions, which are expected to come into force in the near future, may mostly impact those companies that are not in a position to relocate to non-affected manufacturing sites. Speaking of individual brands, the big five in terms of shipment rankings have not changed since last year. In other words, they remain HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus and Apple in that order.

Apple had taken the fourth place in the third quarter of last year (3Q17) with 10.4% of the market share compared to Asus' 8.9%. However, the Cupertino company exhibited 7.9% of this share a year later, whereas its Taiwanese competitor attained 8.4%. HP remains in the lead with a 5% year-on-year (YoY) increase in shipments; however, at 12%, Dell recorded the highest YoY growth. Nevertheless, HP is still expected to ship the most units (42 million compared to Dell's 28 million) this year.

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