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Personal computer shipments fell again in the second quarter, two prominent research firms found, but the declines were less severe than in other recent periods.

International Data Corp. said shipments fell 4.5% for the period ended in June, better than the 7.4% decline it had projected. Gartner Inc. estimated shipments were 5.2% lower than the year-earlier quarter.

The PC industry has been struggling with declining demand for several years because of issues that include a shift in consumer spending to smartphones. The second quarter was the seventh consecutive quarter that shipments fell. IDC estimated that shipments in the first quarter had dropped 11.5%, while Gartner put the decline at 9.6% for the period ended in March.

There were more positive signs in the second quarter. Both firms, for example, said that shipments rose in the U.S. market.

Gartner, which doesn't include the laptops called Chromebooks that run operating software from Google Inc., put the rise in U.S. shipments at 1.4%. IDC, which does include Chromebooks, cited back-to-school demand for those portables as a key factor in its estimate of 4.9% growth in the U.S. market.

The two research firms differed in their characterization of the largest vendors' performance.

Gartner said Dell Inc.'s global shipments rose 3.1%, while HP Inc. experienced a 1.8% decline. Mikako Kitagawa, a Gartner analyst, said Dell's status as a private company has allowed it to be more aggressive in competing in the PC business. HP, by contrast, has to satisfy Wall Street analysts who aren't keen on sales of low-margin PCs that sell in the highest volumes.

"Dell can do whatever they want to do," she said. "PCs are really a cash cow for them."

IDC, by contrast, estimated that HP's global shipments rose 5.1%, compared with 4.2% for Dell.

Both firms estimated that shipments by Lenovo Group Ltd., the No. 1 vendor, declined by slightly more than 2%.

Apple Inc., meanwhile, has suffered lately due to a lack of new Mac models, Ms. Kitagawa said. Gartner put Apple's shipment decline at 4.9% while IDC estimated that the company's shipments fell 8.3%.

Write to Don Clark at don.clark@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 11, 2016 17:55 ET (21:55 GMT)

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