PC sales boom -- it ain't over yet
September 7, 2000 5:52pm
zdii.com
By John G. Spooner ZDNet News
Maybe the PC market isn't dead just yet.
Final sales figures for the second quarter are in, and based on surging demand in the United States and Japan, International Data Corp. says the best is yet to come in the third quarter -- with global PC sales jumping 18.5 percent over the previous year.
IDC, based in Framingham, Mass., sees the worldwide PC market -- which includes desktops, notebooks and servers -- reaching 33.4 million units in the third quarter.
Besides an 18.5 percent increase from last year, that's a 10 percent surge from the second quarter, global sales hit roughly 30.3 million units.
"We initially had said that, globally, PC shipments would be about 33 million ... but we came out with 33.4 million, so we added about 400,000 units," said Bruce Stephen, group vice president for personal systems research at IDC. "It's attributed to more optimism in the United States and the comeback of the Asian economy."
Japan, Korea recoveries helped
The economic recovery of countries including Japan and Korea has helped drive corporate and especially consumer sales. Worldwide, the consumer market grew about 34 percent, worldwide.
When combined with countries that did not have as many PC sales, such as China and India, this shows the worldwide PC market will continue to be strong, Stephen said.
"We're now looking at growth for the year at about 19 percent," he added. "So we're expecting that in the second half the market will grow at about 19.5 percent, compared with 18.2 percent in the first half of the year."
"I think (19 percent growth) says that global demand, across the board, is pretty good."
This year's growth won't top 1999's 23.4 percent, but it bests all other recent years, especially 1998, which showed only 12.8 percent, due to the Asian economic downturn. Growth rates for 1997 were 15.9 percent, compared with 18.1 percent in 1996.
Who's the boss in Q2?
The second-quarter market share numbers spell out a familiar story.
Dell Computer Corp. bested cross-Texas rival Compaq Computer Corp. in the U.S. market, but it was the other way around when it came to worldwide sales.
Compaq lost ground again in the United States, as did IBM Corp. This allowed Dell, Gateway Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. to post growth numbers of up to 45 percent, a whopping gain.
HP's sales grew 45 percent compared to the second quarter of 1999. Dell's growth was 27 percent and Gateway 14 percent. Compaq slipped 6 percent, and IBM fell by almost 19.
The U.S. market represents about 50 million units out of a total of 135 million units for 2000.
Compaq the king worldwide
However, Compaq retained the top spot in worldwide market share, with 13.2 percent, selling more than 4 million units. At the same time, the Houston-based PC maker managed to grow nearly 7 points in market share.
Compared with where Compaq was one year ago, it's "kind of flat in servers. It lost 1.5 points share in desktops, and in the portables area it lost about 2.5 points," Stephen said.
"Dell (No. 2 worldwide) closed the gap against Compaq globally ... last quarter, the separation was about 2.5 points, and this quarter that dropped to under two."
However, he added, "I think that Compaq is improving. It's made improvements in its product line ... and become more efficient."
"But, I think (Compaq) will continue to be under a lot of pressure in the consumer space from HP ... and there's always a ton of competition (in the corporate) market."
Here comes Dell
Dell, ranked No. 2 worldwide, grew 22 percent. The company shipped almost 3.5 million units and grabbed 11 percent of the market.
"Global reach is still a significant factor in Compaq's favor," Stephen said. Dell is not as strong as Compaq or IBM in areas such as Asia-Pacific, he said. Dell also continues to ignore the low end of the market for consumer PCs.
HP and IBM virtually tied for third place, worldwide.
HP, at 7.45 percent market share, picked up the third spot with the most growth by far in the worldwide market at 36 percent. The PC maker sold about 2.259 million units.
Stephens attributed HP's growth in part to being "super-aggressive" in the consumer market. HP also showed huge gains in portables, and is now ranked ninth globally in that market.
IBM losing ground
IBM missed the third spot by only about 5,400 units. However, it was also the only company in the top five worldwide to lose market share.
The fourth-place PC maker, with 7.43 percent market share, gave up ground. IBM posted a negative 4 percent growth rate, with 2.254 million units sold.
Pulling out of retail earlier in the year hurt IBM's numbers, Stephen said.
IBM was followed by Fujitsu-Siemens, which shipped about 1.4 million units, good for 4.6 percent of the market.
IDC arrived at its numbers by counting the number of desktop PC, notebook PC and PC server shipments to computer distributors and direct to end users. |
