PC death knell continues to sound in Western Europe

There's more bad news for the PC market, with a year-on-year shipment decline of 4.4 per cent in the fourth quarter in Western Europe, according to new figures released by Gartner.

No part of the PC market was immune to the fourth quarter fall. Mobile PC shipments were down 6.5 per cent, while desktop PC shipments fell 0.3 per cent. PC shipments in the professional market dropped 1.7 per cent, while the consumer market took a worse hit of 7 per cent.

Despite the figures, Gartner believes that tablets are having less of an impact than before.

"Shipments for traditional PCs (desktops and mobile PCs) in 2013 decreased 14 percent, but the rate of unit decline is moderate across geographies — which could indicate that the impact of tablets cannibalizing PC sales in mature markets is fading," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"Additionally, large numbers of professional PCs running on Windows XP remained in use, and the corporate market has been increasing its PC replacement — making up for a weak consumer PC market."

Top of the charts

HP remained top dog in the Western European PC market, despite a slight drop in shipments in the fourth quarter. It shipped 3.24 million units, compared to 3.29 a year before, a decline of 1.8 per cent. However, it enjoyed a small increase in market share, up from 21.5 per cent to 22.1 per cent, firmly ahead of its competitors.

Lenovo was in second place, shipping 1.95 million units, an 11.8 per cent increase over the 1.74 million it shipped in 2013. Its market share also grew from 11.4 per cent to 13.3 per cent.

Acer came in not far behind with 1.8 million shipments, up 2.4 per cent from the 1.75 million it shifted last year. Its market share also increased from 11.4 per cent to 12.2 per cent.

Asus took the biggest hit, but still managed to take fourth place. Its shipments fell 15.6 per cent, from 1.72 million to 1.45 million. Its market share dropped as a result, down from 11.2 per cent to 9.9 per cent.

Apple enjoyed the largest growth of a whopping 29.5 per cent, with shipments up from 1 million to 1.3 million. Its market share rose from 6.5 per cent to 8.9 per cent. The iPhone maker has traditionally performed well in the pre-Christmas shopping period.

In the UK alone, the scene is similar, with HP and Lenovo in first and second, and Apple in fifth. Acer and Asus are replaced by Dell and Toshiba, however. 2.9 million PCs were shipped in the UK in the fourth quarter, a drop of 6.7 per cent from the year before.

• Where there's never been a better time to move to a new PC

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon Wii U TVii will hit Europe

The Nintendo Wii U has been on sale since 2012 which, despite being just 15 months in real terms, is probably long enough to get most of the features promised during the pre-launch chutzpah out of the gate.

However, here European Wii U owners, in the middle of January 2014, are still waiting for that tidy little electronic programme guide, the company coined Wii U TVii, to start working on their console.

The feature is like Google TV (in a way) and serves up content from your television service and on demand channels. It was missing from launch but promised during 2013. It didn't arrive, so what gives?

"We would like to apologise that we were unable to bring the Nintendo TVii service to Europe in 2013 as originally planned," the company wrote on its official UK website.

Keeping hope alive

Nintendo did offer a smidgen of hope for console owners, telling them to 'stay tuned' for further word on the feature, which allows users to beam content to the television or watch on the Wii U GamePad itself.

"Please continue to keep an eye out for further announcements regarding this service in the near future," it wrote in the statement.

As well as serving up content from the likes of Netflix and users' TiVo boxes, TVii is also a pitched as a second screen companion, where live stats can accompany a sports broadcast.

It'll also act as a remote control. Hopefully European Wii U owners will be controlling more than their disappointment sometime soon. We'll keep you posted.