Europe looking good
Market research outfit IDC has revealed its statistics for the PC market in the fourth quarter of 2007, with the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region proving one of the major drivers behind an overall growth in worldwide PC shipments of 15.5 per cent.
The rate of growth in EMEA was the fastest for a year and a half, with the exception of the quarter immediately before in which the back to school period lifted growth to over 20 per cent. As expected, notebooks were the drivers behind this, with volume growth of 35 per cent in Q4 and 48 per cent in the previous quarter.
"Fourth quarter results show a very healthy PC market," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's worldwide quarterly PC tracker. "There is a lot happening with vendors repositioning their channels and going after new markets while falling prices and portable adoption continue to drive volume. Despite fourth quarter strength, projections for the next couple years anticipate slower growth. Rising concerns about economic growth are likely to reduce expectations further, although we're still likely to see double digit growth through 2008 and probably 2009."
The other strong region was Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), which grew by over 20 per cent. Japan itself turned around a year and a half of sales decline with growth of ten per cent and the US managed nearly nine per cent growth. In the whole of 2007 there were 269 million PCs sold, which represents an increase of 14.3 per cent on the previous year.
Among the vendors HP solidified its position at the top with a 19 per cent share of the global PC market (which includes x86 servers and UMPCs) in Q4 compared with second place Dell’s 14.6 per cent. Dell showed signs of turning the corner after a year of decline in market share in Q4, with its rapid expansion in retail considered to be a key factor. Acer, with its acquisition of Gateway, solidified its third place status with 9.6 per cent market share in Q4, ahead of fourth placed Lenovo with 7.5 per cent.
