The journey that started in 2012 has now reached its first destination. Microsoft Surface has continued its growth trajectory, and the innovative line of hardware devices has grown in stature.
Among buyers, that is.
It now finds itself in good company — among the top 5 brands for PCs in the United States.
This was revealed in the latest data from Gartner, which provides a detailed overview of the PC market in Q3 2018. Overall, the industry showed negligible gains globally with just a meagre 0.1% rate of growth.
PC shipments actually dipped by 0.4% in the US.
However, Microsoft Surface was still able to achieve growth of 1.9% on home turf, earning a 4.1% market share that is good enough for a fifth spot. The usual suspects HP, Dell and Lenovo rounded up the top three places in the ranks of PC makers in the country, while Apple slid in fourth.
The image above shows Microsoft making its entry, though obviously, the company has a lot of catching up to do to overtake Apple.
Worldwide is another story, but the table below paints that picture.
Worth a mention that Chromebooks are not included in what Gartner defines as PCs.
Meaning these devices are excluded from these stats. Which is interesting because these Google OS machines have seen increased adoption in educational institutions in the US, leading to double digit shipment growth.
However, the report does note that enterprise customers were the most significant contributors to PC shipments as consumer demand was found to be lacking.
Apparently, a large fraction of businesses is involved in the Windows 10 upgrade cycle, and this demand is expected to hold steady until 2020 by the time the company gets around retiring the Windows 7 platform.
More of a chance for Surface to impress, then.
