Worldwide PC shipments saw their sharpest decline in nearly two years in the second quarter of 2015, dealing continued damage to retailers and makers of computers, chips and PC software.

Shipments fell 9.5 percent, year on year, to 68.4 million units, according to the research firm Gartner. Rival researcher IDC, which doesn’t include tablets in its tally, tracked an 11.8 percent drop, year on year, to 66.1 million shipments during the quarter. Both firms released PC sales reports on Wednesday.

Lenovo remained the world’s top PC vendor, with 20.3% share, followed by HP (18.5%) and Dell (14.55), according to IDC. The PC market appeared to be consolidating, however, as the top three vendors gained share at the expense of smaller PC vendors.

Consumers started ditching PCs for tablets in 2012, when shipments dropped 2.6 percent, according to Gartner. The market crashed the following year, dropping by 11.1 percent, and continued to fall in 2014 – down .8 percent. The research firm expects things to pick up later this month, when Microsoft plans to launch its Windows 10 operating system. But 2015 will remain a year that personal computer makers would rather forget.

"This year, we expect the market to be down by close to 4 percent compared to 2014," said Mikako Kitagawa, a principal analyst at Gartner.