Surprise — PC Shipments Bump Up

Worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter of this year turned out to
be stronger than Gartner’s earlier forecast. The market research firm said
PC shipments totaled 6.1 million units in the second quarter of 2007, an
11.7 percent increase from the same period last year. Gartner had earlier
projected 10.6 percent growth for the quarter.

In the U.S. market, PC shipments totaled 15.7 million units in the second
quarter of 2007, a 5.9 percent increase from the second quarter of 2006.
Gartner had previously projected growth of 3.2 percent.

“There’s been a big migration to mobile the past few years, but desktop
sales in the U.S. on the corporate side for the quarter exceeded our
expectations,” Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa told internetnews.com.
She said the reasons for the bump up aren’t yet clear pending further
analysis. But Gartner doesn’t give any credit for the
rise to Microsoft’s new Vista operation system.

“There’s been slow adoption of Vista on the corporate side, with many
companies choosing to ‘downgrade’ to XP when they buy new systems,” said
Kitagawa. “This is typical for large enterprises as they go through a very
careful evaluation process.

In an earnings
call with analysts earlier this week, Intel CEO
Paul Otellini made similar comments about Vista’s adoption rate. “Most
companies like Intel have pilots [for Vista], but are waiting for the
service pack expected in the October/November time frame,” he said. Otellini
also noted most new PCs are “Vista-ready” in terms of their specs.

There were no major shake ups in the rankings, with HP and Dell holding on to the top two
spots in PC market share with 18.2 and 15 percent respectively for the
quarter.

The one significant change was Lenovo moving up from the fourth spot to
displace Acer at number three with an 8 percent market share. Acer’s share
for the quarter was 7.2 percent. Gartner said Lenovo significantly exceeded
the worldwide average for sales growth with stronger than average growth in
all regions except Japan.

Acer fell to fourth place despite an impressive year-over-year growth
rate of 54.2 percent.

Dell held onto the No. 1 position in the U.S. market despite growing
below the U.S. average growth rate in second quarter. Kitagawa said Dell’s
sales on the consumer side were lacking. She noted Dell made its first major
retail deal, agreeing to sell systems through
Wal-Mart
stores. However the initial volumes through Wal-Mart were not
significant enough to influence volume in the quarter.

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