“Growth was driven by mobile PCs as shipments increased 18.4 percent compared to the same period a year ago, while desk-based PCs declined 2.3 percent, “ said Lillian Tay, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“The boost in the first half of 2015 came from the education and government segments for PC replacement project deliveries, while the aggressive prices (sub US$300) in the less than 13 inch screen notebooks, and availability of new hybrid models, stimulated consumer purchases.”

Among the top 5 vendors (see table 1), HP and Apple were the two vendors that gained market share in the first half of 2015 (see Table 1). HP’s success was attributed to the project wins and a new mobile PC models line-up. Apple’s introduction of the new Macbook helped the company gain share.

PC shipments in Singapore are expected to total 1.17 million units in 2015, a 7.4 percent increase over 2014. The second half of 2015 will be marginally better than second half 2014 due to subdued local economic conditions; the slowdown in professional market device replacement activity and a push-out in consumer purchases till early 2016 when more PC models will be available based on Intel’s 6th generation CPU architecture.