Global sales of personal computers climbed more than expected in the first three months of the year but slowing in China’s booming market tempered optimism about the figures released Wednesday.
PC makers shipped 89 million units worldwide in the first quarter of this year, a 1.9 per cent increase from the same period in 2011, according to industry tracker Gartner.
‘The results were mixed depending on the region,’ said Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa.
While the region including Europe, Africa and the Middle East had impressive PC shipments of 6.7 per cent, the Asia-Pacific area containing India and China saw slower growth than anticipated, according to Gartner.
‘While the PC industry has high expectations for strong growth in the emerging markets, the slowdown of these countries in this quarter provides a cautionary notice to vendors,’ Kitagawa said.
‘The future growth for the PC industry cannot heavily depend on the emerging markets even though PC penetration in these regions is low.’
Sales of business machines powered growth, with consumer purchases of PCs for personal uses continuing to slide, according to Gartner.
Non-business demand for PCs was being hurt by tight personal budgets as well as competition from tablet computers, especially Apple’s coveted iPads.
The world’s largest computer maker, US-based Hewlett-Packard, increased its share of the global market to 17.2 per cent.
Second-place computer maker Lenovo saw the biggest gains, with the China-based company’s piece of the market swelling more than 28 per cent to 13.1 per cent when compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
Gartner reported that ‘Lenovo has been enjoying healthy growth in the professional market, while the company is successfully expanding into the consumer space.’
Dell and Acer lost market share, slipping to 11 per cent and 10.9 per cent respectively, according to Gartner.