Worldwide PC shipments will hit 293 million units in 2008, up 10.9 percent from 2007, due in part to sales in emerging markets, Gartner said Tuesday.
And although price cuts will occur, revenue will grow around 6 percent for the year, George Shiffler, research director at the firm, said in a phone interview.
That's a good sign. In recent years, revenue has stayed flat from year to year despite unit shipment increases. In 2003, for instance, a then-record 152.6 million PCs were shipped, but they carried an estimated value of $175 billion, or about the same as the the 136.7 million PCs shipped in 2002.
Both the revenue and unit shipment figures also refute the argument, which we've heard about every three months since 1997, that the PC market is dead. PC shipments have increased nearly every year over the past three decades.
There are, of course, danger signs. The weakness of the American economy could hurt PC sales, and there's a rising possibility of a slowdown in China after the orgiastic buying spree leading up to the Olympics.
Emerging nations continued to be a big factor in the market. PC shipments to emerging markets grew 22 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, accounting for 60 percent of worldwide PC unit growth. PCs started to sell in significant numbers to emerging nations at the start of the decade, but most of the PCs went to urban hubs like Beijing and Bangalore, India. By 2004, manufacturers started to more actively come up with designs and distribution strategies to better target these nations.
But desktops also surprisingly look strong. The last desktop replacement cycle occurred in 2004 and 2005. Those machines are not old. Another replacement cycle should occur from late 2008 to early 2010. Replacement sales account for nearly 60 percent of PC shipments worldwide and 80 percent in the states, according to Shiffler. (And make me want to break into song: "In the year 2525, PC shipments will cross the 17.8 billion mark, according to industry figures.")
Hewlett-Packard continued its sprint ahead of the competition in the second quarter of 2007, remaining the No. 1 PC vendor in the world. While Dell has continued to struggle, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba showed positive signs, each outpacing the worldwide PC market growth rate of 12.5 percent, according to IDC.
HP continued its successful run of strong quarters, leading all PC makers by shipping 11.3 million units, good enough for 19.3 percent of the overall market. Dell's global shipments were down almost 5 percent--to about 9.5 million PCs--from a year ago, but remained in second place behind HP.
Dell has taken a hard fall, though it's at least taken steps to recovery. The Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker, in trying to reclaim its momentum with consumers is now offering a line of its PCs in Wal-Mart stores, a fairly bold move and a departure from its traditional sales model. On the other hand, adding color to its notebook lineup, announced last month, is a bit of a me-too effort. In both cases there hasn't been enough time to see whether pink laptops or Wal-Mart's pull with shoppers have had any real effect on demand for Dell PC products.
Meanwhile, HP has experienced "rapid growth, and they have room to run," according to IDC analyst Loren Loverde. "If you look at where they're growing, making big strides in the U.S. despite a relatively soft market. They're clearly taking advantage of Dell's misfortunes."
Lenovo has also rebounded well. The Chinese PC maker made good strides in the second quarter, taking back its third-place mantle from Acer, which slipped down to fourth. Lenovo made up a lot of ground outside of Asia/Pacific.
"Since acquiring IBM's PC (business), Lenovo shipments outside of Asia have been declining and weren't able to get any growth," he said. "So the last couple of quarters they've been able to grow, and that's a really excellent turnaround."
In the U.S. market, Dell still leads the pack--for now. With 28.4 percent of the market, its shipments were down more than 10 percent. HP is nipping at its heels with a 23.6 percent share, followed by Gateway and Apple (both with 5.6 percent) and Toshiba with 5.3 percent, according to IDC.
Rival PC analyst firm Gartner places Acer in fourth place in the U.S. and knocks Apple down to sixth. Gartner shows Acer, which has only recently re-entered the U.S. market, with 163.9 percent growth over a year ago, shipping almost 900 million units, an astounding increase for the U.S., a market that just a few months ago was generally discouraging.
More computers than expected will ship this year, thanks to the need for PCs in emerging markets, particularly China, according to research firm Gartner.
Although Microsoft's new Vista operating system hasn't provided as big a boost as previously thought, worldwide PC shipments should pass 257 million units by the end of this year, according to the figures compiled by Garter analyst George Shiffler. That's an 11.1-percent increase over the 2006 shipment total of 231.5 million units.
It's also a slight bump up from the 10.5 percent unit growth Gartner had projected back in March. The adjusted forecast can be attributed to better sales of notebooks, in addition to the flood of new PCs to places like China, according to Shiffler.
More than half of the 128 million PCs expected to ship to emerging markets over the next two years will be for first-time use rather than as replacement computers, a trend expected to continue in the next decade, according to an eight-year forecast compiled by Forrester Research and released earlier this month.
The average selling price in 2007 for desktops and notebooks worldwide is hovering around $852, according to Gartner. That's about $20 above analysts' estimate earlier this year, but Shiffler said the increase in prices--due to the decline of the dollar, higher shipments of notebooks and a small boost by the release of Windows Vista--is likely temporary.
"They're still falling, but what happened is this year is, they started falling at a slightly slower rate. Bottom line: I don't think vendors should take comfort in the notion that price (declines) have decelerated a bit," he said. "We think we'll be back falling at a 7 percent year-over-year rate before long."
Of the 62 million PCs shipped in the first quarter of 2007, the biggest story is a company that shipped a little over 4 million units. Taiwan-based Acer has taken hold of 6.8 percent of the global PC market, good enough for third place, according to market research firm iSuppli.
After taking the No. 3 slot in worldwide notebook sales from Toshiba in the fourth quarter of 2006, Acer has taken even more ground, this time from Lenovo. The Chinese computer maker is now 0.4 percent points behind Acer in worldwide computer market share.
Acer also turned in the best growth performance of all the top five PC suppliers, according to the iSuppli report. Its shipments grew 45.8 percent to 4.2 million units, up from 2.9 million in the same quarter a year ago.
Hewlett-Packard continued its dominance in the market, maintaining its lead with 17.2 percent market share, followed by Dell at 14.4 percent. Dell was the only one of the top five with negative growth, down almost 7 percent since the first quarter of 2006.
- prev
- 1
- next
