Notebook shipments down 6.3 percent worldwide

Sales of laptops last year declined from 175.5 million in 2014 to 164.4 million in 2015 representing a drop of 6.3 percent according to market research firm TrendForce. Major reasons for the slower sales include the weakening Euro and the delays on getting Skylake out to market.

The top five laptop manufacturers based on market share are HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple, and Asus in that order. Perhaps impressively, Apple jumped two spots from 2014 to become fourth place in Trend Force's latest rankings. The firm is expecting no real shakeup between these top five manufacturers aside from a potentially stronger performance from Asus by the end of this year.

Outside of the top five are Acer, Samsung, and Toshiba with much smaller market share each. Sony was ranked ninth in 2014 only to become pushed into the "Others" category by the following year. TrendForce is predicting a shrinking market at least through the end of 2016 with shipments totaling just 159.2 million units.

The news comes several weeks after reporting that smartphone shipments have increased between the top five smartphone manufacturers. Companies such as Sony and Toshiba have been slowly withdrawing from the notebook space while Xiaomi is expected to unveil a family of affordable notebooks sometime this year.

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