Sales of personal computers took a knock in the fourth quarter from a combination of microprocessor chip shortages and the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, according to reports today from analyst firms International Data Corp. and Gartner Inc.

IDC put total global shipments of PCs for the quarter at 68.1 million units, down 3.7 percent from the same period one year ago. The decline is the largest since the third quarter of 2016, the analyst firm said. For the full year, sales were down 0.4 percent.

Gartner had similar figures, reporting total worldwide shipments of 68.6 million units, which is down 4.3 percent from the same period a year ago.

IDC said that PC makers had built up inventory in the third quarter ahead of the processor shortages and the trade war. However, sales came in lower than expected because of the bumpy stock market, with multiple retailers reporting a slowdown in sales following a rush of activity on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Gartner blamed the processor shortage partly on Intel Corp.’s problems with manufacturing issues, and meant that some PC makers couldn’t meet the demand for business upgrades. However, it said sales should pick up in 2019 as more central processing units become available.

“Just when demand in the PC market started seeing positive results, a shortage of CPUs (central processing units) created supply chain issues,” said Mikako Kitagawa, senior principal analyst at Gartner. “The impact from the CPU shortage affected vendors’ ability to fulfill demand created by business PC upgrades. We expect this demand will be pushed forward into 2019 if CPU availability improves.”

Both analyst firms placed Lenovo Group Holding Ltd. at the top of the tree in terms of market share with close to 17,000 unit shipments in the fourth quarter. Hewlett-Packard Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. rounded out the top three list of suppliers. Both Lenovo and Dell managed to grow their sales in the quarter despite the overall market slump, but HP saw sales decline. Apple Inc., the world’s fourth-largest PC supplier, also saw sales fall.

Here’s IDC’s numbers:

And this is the assessment from Gartner:

Image: 27707/pixabay