Fourth quarter PC shipments climb in EMEA

by Stuart Wilson, Thursday 14 January 2010

Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst for Gartner’s client computing markets group in EMEA

Fourth quarter PC shipments climbed 3.6% year-on-year in EMEA to hit 29.66 million units. HP topped the vendor rankings in EMEA, shifting 6.01 million units, accounting for 21.6% of the total market. Fast-growing Acer is snapping at HP’s heels in second place with unit sales of 5.89 million for the quarter – an increase of 37.1% year-on-year.

HP’s unit sales dipped 2.6% year-on-year. Dell picked up third spot in the preliminary EMEA vendor rankings with unit sales of 2.71 million – up 2.8% year-on-year. Asus put in a strong performance in fourth place with unit sales climbing 18.4% to 2.39 million. Toshiba took fifth spot, shifting 1.73 million units – down fractionally on the fourth quarter of 2008.

The top five vendors accounted for 63.2% of the total market, with other vendors outside the top five shifting 10.93 million units in the quarter. “The EMEA PC market was finally on the upward growth curve in the fourth quarter of 2009, and was the last major region across the world to do so,” said Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst for Gartner’s client computing markets group in EMEA. “The quarter over quarter increase was nearly 17% indicating a return to seasonal patterns.”

Both Western Europe and the Middle East market saw growth in the fourth quarter according to Gartner. The Eastern European market remained weak and declined overall despite some slow signs of improvement in some countries.

Across EMEA, netbooks remained the driving force for market growth, According to Gartner, ‘mini-notebook volumes’ represented more than 20% of the total EMEA mobile PC market. “The impact of Windows 7 was minimal. Vendors’ efforts to reduce Vista inventory before the Windows 7 launch were not fully successful as there was still an excess of Vista inventories at the beginning of the quarter slowing new shipments,” said Atwal.

Gartner’s analysis of the EMEA market stated: “Unlike previous quarters all the vendors in the top five posted growth apart from HP and Toshiba, which suffered supply-chain issues. There is currently group of vendors consisting of Apple, Sony, Samsung and Lenovo which are all battling for fifth place.

“We predict that the EMEA PC market will exhibit 5 percent growth in the second quarter of 2010, and we anticipate a 10 percent growth for 2010,” added Atwal.

DISTREE XXL 2010

Ranjit Atwal is one of many industry experst speaking at DISTREE XXL - EMEA’s premier distribution and channel event. View the speaker line-up here

Top distributors and vendors from across the EMEA region have been invited to attend DISTREE XXL 2010, the premier event for the regional ICT and CE channel, from February 8-11th in Monaco.

Vendors interested in participating at DISTREE XXL, please contact fhemraj@distree.com

DISTREE XXL gathers 400-plus senior executives from EMEA’s Information Communications Technologies (ICT) & Consumer Electronics (CE) volume distribution channel.

During the course of the three-day event, delegates take part in thousands of pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings with hundreds of vendors. Each year, hundreds of new distribution agreements are struck across EMEA as a result of business relationships initiated at DISTREE XXL.

DISTREE XXL 2010 will also build on successful initiatives launched at last year’s sold out event including a regional awards ceremony. The ‘EMEA Channel Academy: 2010 Awards’ will include more than a dozen awards handed out to vendors and distributors from across the region. www.distree.com/xxl

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