Worldwide PC market decline as Windows 8 fails to gain speed

The worldwide PC market saw a worse-than-expected decline in Q4 of 2012. This holiday was the first time in the last  five years
there was a drop in sales--6.4 percent. There was also 12-month decline of 3.2 percent, according to market research firm IDC.

For the year, 352.4 million units shipped worldwide compared with 363.9 million in 2011.

• Leading the pack, HP sold 15 million units, which was just about flat (-0.6 percent) from Q4 2011. Year over year they were down 6.7 percent.
• In second place in the PC market, Lenovo grew by 8.2 percent to sell 14.1 million units in Q4, and Y-O-Y expanded by 19.2 percent in the year to reach 52.5 million units.
• In third, Dell shipped 9.5 million units. This is down 20.8 percent, in Q4.
• Acer dropped 28.2 percent to 7 million units in the quarter and 9.7 percent to 33.5 million units for the year.
• In fifth place,  ASUS fell 5.6 percent to 6.5 million units in the fourth quarter but actually saw growth for the year as a whole, shipping 24.1 million units, a gain of 17 percent.