Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 9 Percent in First Quarter of 2007

Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 9 Percent in First Quarter of 2007

Consumer Launch of Vista Operating Systems Leads to Temporary Spike in PC Shipments in Mature Regions

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.”