HP hits the PC market top spot for second quarter running

Dell continues to see its market dominance slip as rival HP sees its shipments increase by 23.9 per cent over the quarter

Hewlett-Packard (HP) scored top billing in the global PC market for the second consecutive quarter and finished 2006 in joint first place with archrival Dell according to analyst firm Gartner.

In Q4 2006, HP’s worldwide PC shipments increased 23.9 per cent to secure it 17.4 per cent market share. In comparison Dell’s shipments slipped 8.7 per cent, resulting in global market share of 13.9 per cent. Lenovo was third with 7.1 per cent market share, closely followed by Acer with 6.8 per cent and Toshiba came fifth with 3.8 per cent.

This is the second quarter that Dell has lost out to HP as it continues to suffer from weaker sales in the US.

“PC price erosion was a defining feature of the quarter,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s client computing markets group. “In the consumer market, the PC industry battled for wallet share against other consumer electronics products, such as games consoles and flat panel TVs, while at the same time cutting prices to ensure market demand did not stall prior to Microsoft’s Vista consumer launch in January.”

The EMEA region ended the year with a strong fourth quarter with shipments totaling 25.7 million units, an 11.9 per cent increase from the Q4 2005.
Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst for Gartner’s computing platform group in EMEA said: “The EMEA PC market continued to be driven by strong consumer mobile PC demand in Q4. However western Europe suffered from weaker demand than expected, with growth slowing in Germany and the Nordic countries in particular. Overall, the impending arrival of Vista had little effect on consumer demand, except to keep prices lower, as consumers continued to purchase PCs at the entry-level price points.”