Michael Dell, CEO and founder of the PC company that bears his name, says most of the non-giant companies selling computers will be out of business within the next seven years. Speaking at a conference in India he said that the big three computer manufacturers – HP, Dell and Lenovo, which currently hold 50 percent of the market, will control a minimum of 80 percent in that time period.
Dell said in the first half of 2015, his company had surpassed Lenovo and HP in notebook sales and the company had “now grown ten quarters in a row”.
But experts say since Dell is a privately held company, no data exists to back the claims apart from records kept by PC industry analysts.
They say statistics put together by Gartner show that in 2014 Dell had 12.8 percent market share, HP 17.5 percent, and Lenovo was leading the pack with 18.8 per cent, with Acer trailing way behind and struggling to move up the field.
Lenovo has reportedly set itself a target of reaching 30 percent of global PC sales. This year Lenovo has taken 19.7 per cent of the market in sales, followed by HP with 17.4 percent, and Dell at 14 percent.
Lenovo’s European operations president Eric Cado said “it is better to be the big guy than the little guy, because it is expensive and you need to have a better balance sheet. Financially it is tough There is nobody arguing that we will not be there in the future. The market trends toward commoditization … plays totally in our favour. We know how to play the low-cts environment.”
Experts say Sony and Samsung have already quit the PC market and that Toshiba has financial woes and looking at selling its PC operations or shutting it down completely.
Cador believes consolidation is a must for minor PC companies – “you need to be in the number one or two position to have a chance to make some profit”.
The CEO of accounting firm Context, Jeremy Davis, agreed with Dell’s prediction of a shrinking PC manufacturing market.
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