Like Mr.D said 'But wait there is MORE'- Revised Q2 data from Europe.
'morning Lee and all.
check this out.
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Performance in the three largest markets overall, was good.
-The UK registered a growth rate of 24.6 percent.
-France reached 20 percent.
-Germany increased slightly to 11.2 percent.
The UK market maintained high growth rates achieved in the first quarter despite doubts over the future of the economy and fears of the effect of a high-value pound.
The French PC market also continued to grow steadily. Although the PC business in France seemed negatively affected by the World Cup, high sales were still achieved in the small and medium business sector. Sales in this area are expected to become even stronger over the next couple of quarters, with government schemes to support the medical and educational sector fully functioning by September. The consumer market, suffering somewhat with customers' attention having been temporarily diverted by World Cup activity, is also expected to take off again over the next few months.
Germany, Europe's biggest PC market, exceeded the growth rate achieved in the first quarter. The consumer market was still depressed due to continuing price wars and increasingly fierce competition from food chain PC sales. The corporate sector however, continued to grow steadily thanks to a more relaxed economic situation and an increasing IT demand from small and medium-sized businesses.
The Netherlands, growing at a rate of 20 percent compared to the second quarter of 1997, continued to profit from a very healthy economy which has seen steadily dropping unemployment figures for a few quarters, and is likely to remain stable under a new government elected in May.
Spain, growing at a rate of 15.4 percent, did less well than expected, especially following a very good first quarter. However, growth was still satisfactory and is expected to remain steady over the next few quarters. Although clone assembly is on the increase, there seems to be a trend for the corporate sector and institutions to move towards only purchasing major PC brands.
Italy, like Spain, could not achieve its high Q1 growth rate but still grew at 10.7 percent. A clear trend towards major PC brands can also be seen here, with virtually no price differences between clone PCs and major PC brands and users choosing the latter ones.
A country with exceptionally high growth this quarter was Sweden, which had a 40.2 percent growth rate and thus even out-performed the high growth achieved in the first quarter. The strong growth is mainly due to the 'Employee Purchase' government scheme already in place last quarter, which enables companies to sell PCs to their employees at very low prices.
Overall, the second quarter was characterised by a high growth in the Small and Medium Business segment (SMB). This compensates for the partly stagnating consumer markets, along with a continuous rise in Government IT spending and a trend towards major PC brand sales, as the latter begin to reach the price points of cloned PCs.
The consolidation around top PC manufacturers continues, a trend reinforced with the Digital acquisition by Compaq. The top five vendors are Compaq (including Digital), IBM, Dell, HP and SNI which, altogether, grew 29.3 percent year-over-year, ten points above average market growth. Their consolidated share increased from 42.7 percent in Q2 1997 to 46.3 percent in Q2 this year. Overall in Q2 1998, the top five vendors have shipped 2.407 million PCs.
Dell and Fujitsu were by far the best performers in the second quarter, achieving a unit growth of 85.4 percent and 72.1 percent respectively.
Dell achieved overall best growth performance with 451,232 PCs shipped in the second quarter, compared to 243,415 units in the same quarter last year, an 85.4 percent growth year over year. As a result, from being number 5 one year ago, Dell jumps to second position in Q2 with 8.7 percent share of the Western European PC market, behind Compaq.
Dell also grew very strongly in the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. The vendor shipped 63,000 units in Sweden this quarter (+322 percent growth year over year), and grew 138.7 percent to 6,062 units in Denmark. In the Netherlands, 43,721 units were shipped, a 139.3 percent growth over last year. Dell did well in the bigger countries too: UK grew 61.7 percent (148,315 units), France grew 67.9 percent (60,693 units) and Germany grew 43.2 percent (54,405 units)..
[source:excerpts courtesy context]
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