Only Finland, Sweden avoid Europe's PC bloodbath

European PC sales through distribution fell by 17% in Q2 compared with last year. In western Europe, leading economies' PC sales fell by over 20% with only the UK coming in differently with a 5% fall. Only Finland and Sweden reported growth over last year.

Figures from early PC distribution sell through data from IT market research company CONTEXT, show a negative performance in Western European PC sales during the first two months of Q2 2012, marked by a -16.6% decline in sales across April and May compared to the same period in 2011.

Sales of devices in the mobile categories registered negative year-on-year growth with notebooks declining -16.6% and netbooks falling -45.7%. In contrast, ultrabooks sales gradually increased each month as products became available.

“It’s going to take a lot to wake up Europe’s PC market over the rest of the year”, said Jeremy Davies, CEO & co-founder at CONTEXT. “Ultrabooks, while popular, remain too pricey to spur PC growth, and the jury’s still out on Windows 8.”

Desktop based products experienced a slight decline at -7.2% across April and May according to these latest reports by CONTEXT, while servers and workstations dropped by -12.5% and -17.9% respectively.

“It seems that consumers simply don’t have the finances to continue buying PCs while businesses are still impacted by negative economic news”, Davies added. “The only bright spot is tablets – perhaps the novelty factor and delight the user interface brings can stir buyers out of their depression provided pricing is right.”


Countries YoY
Austria -31.8%
Belgium -7.2%
Denmark -13.4%
Finland 7.3%
France -25.0%
Germany -22.3%
Italy -22.3%
Netherlands -11.7%
Norway -8.8%
Spain -21.6%
Sweden 19.4%
Switzerland -9.3%
UK -5.2%
Total -16.6%