MARKET WATCH - PC shipments on the rise

Increased demand for home and top brand PCs maintain stable growth in sales figures, but vendors struggle to make an impact on market share for the fourth quarter of 1998.

ITALY SUMMARY: 1998

me and top brand PCs maintain stable growth in sales figures, but vendors struggle to make an impact on market share for the fourth quarter of 1998. Italy has shown a stable performance in 1998, with growth for the whole year reaching 17.7 per cent in comparison with 1997. The total number of units shipped increased from 1,585,000 in 1997 to 1,865,500 in 1998 - a rise of almost 300,000.

As in most other European countries, demand for home PCs was on the rise. Acer was one of the biggest winners during the year - unit shipments increased from 74,533 in 1997 to 107,645 in 1998. Hewlett Packard and Siemens also posted impressive unit shipment numbers - rising from 133,975 to 173,947, and from 81,185 to 113,091, respectively.

Compaq achieved the largest rise in vendor market share during the year of 1.2 per cent, with its share of the market rising from 15.4 per cent in 1997 to 16.6 per cent in 1998.

IBM was close behind with a 1.1 per cent improvement - moving from 10.9 per cent to 12 per cent. Acer also grew its market share by the samepercentage - rising from 4.7 per cent in 1997 to 5.8 per cent in 1998.

ITALY SUMMARY: Q4 1998

In Italy, growth remained stable at a rate of 18.1 per cent compared with the same quarter last year. The shift in sales towards key PC brands as identified in previous quarters continued. During the quarter, vendors struggled to improve market share when compared with the same period a year ago.

Hewlett Packard was the best of the bunch in vendor market share with a 0.7 per cent improvement, followed by IBM with a 0.5 per cent increase.

Acer and Compaq both achieved a 0.4 per cent gain. Packard Bell/NEC's market share in the quarter dropped from 4.9 per cent to 4.1 per cent - a loss of 0.8 per cent.

Over the quarter as a whole, market growth remained healthy, but fell slightly compared with the same quarter a year ago - dropping from 22 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1997 to 18.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 1998.