Worldwide PC shipments totaled 62.7 million units in the first quarter of 2007, a 8.9 percent increase from the same period last year, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. The worldwide total is in line with Gartner’s earlier projections; however the geographic regions showed mixed results.
The United States, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Latin America regions performed better than Gartner’s forecast while Asia/Pacific and Japan shipments were lower than expected. The Asia/Pacific region surpassed the U.S. PC market to take the No. 2 position in terms of shipments for the first time.
Microsoft’s official consumer launch of Vista in January, had very limited impact on overall worldwide shipment demand on a quarterly basis. On a monthly basis, mature regions experienced a bubble in demand following its release. Vista adoption was primarily in the consumer and very small business segments of the mature regions.
Hewlett-Packard’s worldwide PC shipment growth far outpaced the industry average (see Table 1), with its worldwide PC shipments increasing 28.7 percent in the first quarter. Meanwhile, Dell had another difficult quarter experiencing below-average growth across many regions.
“HP was helped by the Vista operating system consumer launch in the mature regions, and it is benefiting from a strong position in the channel,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest’s Client Computing Markets Group. “The first quarter of 2007 was a transitional quarter for Dell as the company began a major restructuring project.”
Acer moved into the No. 3 position for worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter. The company’s shipment growth well exceeded the industry average across all regions. Although Lenovo dropped to the No. 4 position, the company achieved its highest year-over-year growth rate since its acquisition of IBM’s PC division.
In the U.S. PC market, PC shipments grew 2.9 percent in the first quarter compared to a year ago. These results were higher than Gartner’s forecast which called for 0.6 percent growth. “The home segment continued to drive PC shipment growth in the U.S. market,” Ms. Kitagawa said.
Dell maintained the No. 1 position in the first quarter of 2007 (see Table 2), but its shipment growth was well below the industry average. The company’s results were mainly attributed to its weakness in the home market.
HP narrowed the gap with Dell for the top spot in the U.S. market. Early indications show that HP’s growth was driven by strong retail business and a steady increase of small and midsize business (SMB).
PC shipments in EMEA totaled 21.6 million units in the first quarter of 2006, a 13.7 percent increase from the same period last year. Strong demand in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions bolstered the overall PC growth in EMEA. The EMEA PC market was again driven by strong consumer mobile PC demand. Growth in the professional market was soft with deskbased growth that was particularly weak.
In Asia/Pacific PC shipments reached 15.7 million units, a 10.3 percent increase from the first quarter of last year. The overall market performance was slightly weaker than projected due to weaker deskbased PC growth. In China, the first quarter is traditionally the weakest shipment quarter of the year due to the Lunar New Year celebrations. However, the PC market in China grew 15.2 percent in the first quarter with deskbased PC growth of 10.1 percent and mobile PC growth of 38.3 percent.
Mobile PC shipments also accounted for strong growth in Latin America. PC shipments in Latin America totaled 5.1 million in the first quarter, a 21 percent increase from the first quarter last year. Mobile PC shipments increased 86 percent in the first quarter. Through multiple PC offerings, easier and extended credit, bundling and product bonuses, retail channels continue to capture a substantial portion of the home and small business markets.
PC shipments in Japan surpassed 4 million units in the first quarter, a 6.8 percent decline from the same period last year. Both deskbased and mobile PC segments are expected to register year-over-year declines. The slow mobile PC growth was artificially affected by inventory control for the spring model releases. Some vendors intentionally reduced shipments at the end of the first quarter in order to prepare for the spring models that are being introduced in April.
These results are preliminary. Final statistics will be available soon to clients of Gartner’s PC Quarterly Statistics Worldwide by Region program. This program offers a comprehensive and timely picture of the worldwide PC market, allowing product planning, distribution, marketing and sales organizations to keep abreast of key issues and their future implications around the globe. Additional research can be found on Gartner’s Computing Hardware section on Gartner’s Web site at http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/asset_129157_2395.jsp
Related articles:
Gartner: Apple’s U.S. Mac shipments up 30.6% year over year – January 18, 2007
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 6.1% of U.S. market share in Q3 06 – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple should quit hardware business and license Mac OS X to Dell – October 18, 2006
Gartner: Apple Mac grabbed 4.6% U.S. market share in Q2 06 – July 19, 2006
Apple growing!!
Somebody please wake up Paul Thourot with the new figures,shesh
“Resistance is futile!”
ok.. totally off topic, but I gotta ask. Has anybody else had all of their DRM magically disappear recently in their itunes libraries?
Everything I’ve ever purchased recently is DRM free, and I did nothing to make this happen. – this is a bit freaky.
Must be the gremlins.
Woo Hoo!!
In the US market- total PC growth would have been less than 1% if not for Apple.
The troubling thing about this is that approx. 13 million pc were sold with Vista (under duress – no choice offered)
— first post!!
>Jim – TIV
I made a purchase through iTunes on April 5 and the songs are still “protected”.
@ Jim – TIV
No, but if you figure out how you did it you have to let us know!
-c
MW: ‘life’ (don’t talk to me about life)
@ ChrissyOne
I’m sure you have an interesting life
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These numbers don’t look right. Toshiba selling more than Apple? Gateway selling more than Apple? Anyone here know *anyone* buying a Gateway? And Apple still at 5%? NO WAY! One of my in-house customers was expressing such frustration with her not-so-old Dell. She’s waiting for it to DIE so she can buy a Mac!
So much for falling Mac sales. It pays to wait and see versus hypothosize about nothing.
Correct headline?
Isn’t Apple market share up by 25%? The market share went from 4% in the first quarter of 2006 to 5% a year later. That’s a 25% increase, not a 1% increase. The share went up by 1 percentage point. Perhaps that’s what MDN meant?
Hey Lee, why don’t you take your extreme leftist propaganda somewhere else? Like shove it up your ass, where it belongs.
I’m getting sick of MDN. All the left-wing nut-tards are ruining it.
The fact that Gateway and Acer still ship more units than Apple is a very sad commentary on computer users as a whole.
Great!! In another 30 years it just might surpass Dell and HP.
Yaaawwwwnnnnn. Someone wake me up when they hit 20%.
@Chrissy….
I’m in agreement, I’m pretty sure I can say your life is probably VERY interesting!
Not sure how this happened yet, but just to prove a point I burned a DVD of National Treasure purchased from the iTunes store in iDVD. Also, when I get info on any protected file, they all come up unlocked. I can use and import any movie or music file into iMovie, and export out of it also.
This happened overnight, or in the last few days I guess, and I’ve not installed any updates or new software. I’m running the home theater on a lampstand imac, g4 1.25, OSX 10.4.9
Just for fun I’m gonna go buy something from iTunes and see what happens.
“All the left-wing nut-tards are ruining it.”
Do you even know what a liberal is? What left wing is?
Or do you just wait until someone tells you what to think?
I think a couple of things need to be clarified in these figures.
1. The figures reflect estimates of the number of units SHIPPED, not SOLD.
2. Table 2 reflects unit shipment estimates in the US only.
3. The 5% market share for Apple computer is for Q1 2007 only, not total market share.
ok, that file “On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring” downloaded locked mp4. But the rest of the library, which is considerable, continues to be DRM free.
Must be a weird gift from the file corruption gods.
The bummer is Apple still can’t ship more than Gateway.
Damn.
Macromancer… I’m guessing that TT’s regular impersonator has re-appeared.
That, or TT has raided the liquor cabinet early today! Which, if it is the case… why didn’t you call me over TT?
Give it a few quarters, joe…
All Apple needs now is the Beatles catalogue on iTunes and their turn to the Dark Side will be complete! HA, HA, HA, HA!
Speaking of the Beatles, I just watched a “Rocky Racoon” video made by some teenage guys. It was really good. Link here.
TowerTone, WTF, man? I mean c’mon. Lee was just saying the news was better than what the headline appeared to be. How is that left-wing? Care to answer that? Or maybe your just POSTING IN THE WRONG ARTICLE! SO WHY DON’T YOU TAKE YOUR PROPAGANDA (being a right-leaning kinda guy I’m not gonna say “right-wing propaganda) AND SHOVE IT WHERE IT’LL DO YOU THE MOST GOOD. AND FOLLOW IT WITH A CORN COB SO IT STAYS NICE AND SECURE.
JESUS H. CHRIST ON A CRUTCH WITH MARY, JOHN AND JOSEPH.
@ Jim – TIV
Just restore from your backup drive. That’s what it’s for!
“She’s waiting for it to DIE so she can buy a Mac!”
I’m sure you can help accelerate that by removing protection and leaving it on the Internet exposed for afew mins….