San Francisco, Apr 12 (IANS): The global shipments of traditional PCs declined 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2022 but exceeded earlier forecasts, says a new report.

According to the market research firm IDC, despite ongoing supply chain and logistical challenges, vendors still shipped 80.5 million PCs during the quarter.

"The focus should not be on the year-over-year (YoY) decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected," Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said in a statement.

"The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges," Reith added.

The first-quarter volume marks the seventh consecutive quarter where global shipments surpassed 80 million, a feat not seen since 2012.

The rankings among the top vendors remained unchanged in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.

Lenovo remained the top company with a 22.7 per cent market share, followed by HP, Dell Technologies and Apple.

Dell, Apple and ASUS were the only top-tier vendors that saw year-over-year shipment growth.

"Even as parts of the market slow due to demand saturation and rising costs, we still see some silver linings in a market that has reached an inflection point towards a slower pace of growth," said Jay Chou, research manager for IDC's Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker.

"Aside from commercial spending on PCs, there are still emerging markets where demand had been neglected in the earlier periods of the pandemic, and higher-end consumer demand also has held up," Chou added.