Research puts Euro PC sales into context

Research outfit Context has estimated that the Western European PC market grew 14 per cent during the second quarter of this year, shipping over four million machines.

For the three months from April to June, Context found that 4,160,992 PCs were shipped throughout Western Europe. This increase compares with the 7.5 per cent achieved in the first quarter of the year. The rise in sales is attributed to the recovery of the PC market in France, Italy, Span and Sweden.

But the big three computer markets experienced mixed fortunes for the second quarter, with Germany growing 7.8 per cent, the UK with 17.3 per cent and France grew 16.9 per cent.

Among the top five vendors, Compaq has held on to its position as the number one supplier, with 14.8 per cent of the PC market in the second quarter. IBM ranked in the second slot with 8.8 per cent, followed by Hewlett Packard with seven per cent, Siemens Nixdorf with six per cent and Dell with five per cent.

The fastest growth in the quarter was experienced by Siemens with a growth of 59.3 per cent, Dell with 50.6 per cent, Gateway 2000 with 47.2 per cent, Toshiba with 44 per cent and Compaq with 41.2 per cent.

Apple?s European market share declined 10 per cent with 126,406 PCs shipped.