Onwards and upwards
Good news for the technology sector: while the country may be struggling to emerge from recession, our industry is doing a lot better. According to figures from IDC, the worldwide PC industry had a record quarter at the end of 2009 and even managed growth for the full year.
While shipments showed a modest increase on Q3 2009, they rose 31.3 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. Yes, that was the post-Lehman quarter, but that's a decent recovery nonetheless. Shipments increased by 205 percent for the full year, but revenue declined by 7.1 percent to $28.6 billion.
"Compared to 3Q09, the modest rise in shipments in 4Q09 indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Shane Rau, director of PC research at IDC. "Compared to 4Q08, the huge rise in shipments indicates that the market has put the recession behind it. Both comparisons indicate that the PC industry anticipates improvement in PC end demand in 2010."
Intriguingly, AMD seems to have done especially well out of this growth. It gained 0.7 percent of market share (chiefly, of course, at the expense of Intel) for the quarter and a similar proportion for the year. This gain came across the board, with AMD now having 28.6 percent of the desktop segment, 12.7 percent of the mobile space and 10.2 percent of the server market.
IDC is forecasting healthy growth of 15.1 percent for the worldwide PC market this year. "We're looking forward to the end of the second quarter and the second half of the year as corporations qualify new client and server platforms and open up their IT budgets further," said Rau. "Combined with healthy consumer spending, the resumption of corporation spending will lead to a healthy 2010."
In a separate report, IDC predicted the smartphone market will grow at a rate of over 20 percent per year for the next four years and that by 2013, Android will be the second biggest mobile phone operating system behind Symbian.
"Mobile operating systems have become the key ingredient in the highly competitive mobile device market," said Stephen D. Drake, VP of mobility and telecom. "Although the overall look and feel of the device will still play an important role in the buying process, the wrong choice of operating system coupled with an awkward user interface can mean the difference between success and failure."
