Laptops shine as PC shipments rise
Light at the end of the tunnel as research firms paint a brighter picture
The PC sector may be coming out from behind the clouds of depression. Two research firms have claimed that PC and laptop shipments are on the rise.
However, the news was not so good for everyone. Hewlett-Packard (HP) dropped to second place in unit shipments, IDC claimed.
The research firm said the UK PC market grew by 17.4 per cent, its best growth in three years, during the third quarter.
Splitting the UK shipments by vendor, IDC found that Dell increased its market share by 34.6 per cent to 22 per cent. IBM saw shipment growth of 19.8 per cent, while Toshiba grew by 17.8 per cent year on year.
But HP's sales declined by 0.8 per cent and its share dropped to 18.4 per cent. IDC said the firm suffered in the desktop market, but its focus on the mobile sector had been positive, seeing growth of 76 per cent.
Les Billing, managing director of distributor Microtronica, said: "Lots of low-end laptops went into education during Q3. There was plenty of action with Centrino, and tons of advertising."
This is supported by analyst Context, which said that notebook shipments in the UK have exploded, growing by 40 per cent to 496,710.
Deliveries of portable PCs to European end-users rose by 27.7 per cent in Q3 2003, compared with that quarter in 2002.
Its PC findings were slightly lower than IDC, with Context stating that total UK PC shipments grew by 16 per cent to 1,660,863.
"Shipments ramped up as vendors sold into distribution," said Jeremy Davies, co-founder of Context. "There is usually a lag in sales as distributors move stock to resellers."