Big Blue bombs out of boom in Euro sales

The European PC market grew by 16 per cent during the second quarter ended June, but IBM fared badly compared with other big manufacturers.

According to figures released by Dataquest last week, the European market has grown by 16.1 per cent. But while the figures were the best in the past 18 months, the research company warned that it was too soon to predict another boom.

The figures also revealed that all the leading manufacturers ? Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Siemens Nixdorf ? showed dramatic growth in both unit and market share terms over the same quarter last year.

Compaq led in PC shipments with 17.6 per cent market share, followed by Dell with 11.6 per cent and Packard Bell/NEC with 5.9 per cent. Toshiba was fourth with 5.8 per cent, which was generated on notebook sales alone as it had yet to see any sales for its desktop PCs launched at the beginning of June. IBM came next with 5.5 per cent, Gateway 2000 with 4.9 per cent, Hewlett Packard with 4.2 per cent and Apple with 3.8 per cent.

Dataquest also found that Toshiba is continuing to dominate the notebook market with 34.7 per cent market share during the second quarter, with Compaq at 13.4 per cent. Dell achieved 10.5 per cent, IBM 9.9 per cent, Apple 3.9 per cent and Olivetti hit 3.5 per cent.

In the UK, Dataquest found that consumer sales were poor, despite an economic boom, and in the professional sector investment levels were suppressed due to the high rate of sterling. Dataquest said if the growth levels continue into the second half of the year, there would be cause for concern.