Global PC shipments up by 12 per cent in 2Q07, Gartner says 19 July, 2007 By Liam Lahey

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"The PC market experienced a boost from better than expected sales in the United States, Asia/Pacific and Latin America," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst, client computing markets group, for Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner. "The U.S. desk-based PC market beat our expectations, due in part to higher than expected sales in the professional market. In the Asia/Pacific region, China and South East Asia saw strong shipment growth."

But she also said it was too early to say why professional desk-based PC growth was higher than expected.

"It would be a couple of scenarios such as earlier than expected replacement cycle uptake or stronger than expected public market growth," she told eChannelLine. "But we have not concluded these yet. We expect that the U.S. professional market will see some uptake toward the end of this year to next year."

Gartner said the worldwide market continued to be driven by strong consumer PC growth.

Mobile PC demand remained strong, while Vista's impact on consumer demand is considered to have been minimal. Hewlett-Packard remained the number one vendor based on PC shipments, accounting for 18.2 per cent of worldwide shipments. HP grew faster than the worldwide market average growth rate for the ninth quarter in a row. HP showed steady growth across all regions and platforms.

"Consumers buy PCs for many reasons, for instance, the need for a new PC for their kids or the need of replacing old PCs with new PCs, or perhaps a price break of new systems. But we do not believe that they buy PCs because new OS was released," Kitagawa remarked. "Vista won't be the direct driver of the PC market growth. We believe that consumer market has been very much price driven. For the professional market, Vista adoption has been very slow. Enterprise customers as well as those in the public sectors are typically buying Windows XP systems at the moment. It will take a while to see a major Vista deployment in the professional space."

Meanwhile, Gartner said Dell continued to struggle, as it experienced lower growth rates than the average across all regions. The major weakness continued to be derived from the consumer market. Dell held onto the top spot in the U.S. market despite growing below the U.S. average growth rate in the second quarter.

"Dell had less focus on to consumer market in the past. As a result, they missed growth opportunities in the area despite the fact that the market was growing much faster pace than the professional market," she continued. "Since Michael Dell returned to take the helm, he declared that gaining consumer space market share would be one of the focus areas for Dell. But the efforts have not show positive results yet. Also Dell does not want to play in the low-end market where the profit margin is very thin, but growth (in the low-end) was faster than other consumer segment.

"Dell made its first major retail shipments to Wal-Mart stores, however volumes were not significant enough to influence its growth performance in the quarter."

After dropping to the fourth position last quarter, Lenovo retook the number three position in the worldwide rankings from Acer in 2Q07. Lenovo significantly exceeded the worldwide average, showing stronger than regional growth across all regions except Japan.

Despite a year-over-year growth rate of 54.2 per cent, Acer still fell to the fourth position. Acer's growth was fueled by a strong performance in the U.S., coupled with strong growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 15.7 million units in 2Q07, a 5.9 per cent increase from 2Q06. Gartner had previously projected growth of 3.2 per cent.

HP continued to grow much faster than the U.S. average. Gartner analysts said early results show this growth was mainly driven by both desk-based and mobile PC shipments. The company also showed consistent growth in desk-based PC as well.

In EMEA, PC shipments totaled 18.6 million units in the second quarter, up 11.9 per cent from the same period last year. Both the consumer and professional mobile PC markets showed strong growth. Central and Eastern Europe, and the Gulf region in the Middle East and Africa continued to lift the overall EMEA results.

PC shipments in Asia/Pacific totaled 17 million units, an 18.3 per cent increase from a year ago. PC shipments in China grew 23.6 per cent, driven by strong demand from the professional market.

The Latin America PC market had PC shipments reach 5.2 million units, a 25 per cent increase from the second quarter last year. A robust Latin America home market drove that growth. Home PC shipments increased 32 per cent in the quarter -- 10 percentage points ahead of the professional segment's growth rate.

In Japan, PC shipments in the second quarter totaled 3.3 million units, a 4.6 per cent decline from the same period last year. Analysts said both the professional and home markets are expected to post lower than expected results.

Gartner's final 'PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region' would soon be released, officials said.