UK PC Market Grows Again

The UK PC market continued to go from strength to strength in Q2 of 2004, recording double-digit year-on-year growth for the fifth quarter running, according to a report this week from IDC.

With corporate buying rebounding and consumer demand strong, more than 1.87m units were shipped - a growth of 21.4%.

SME and consumer demand meant continued strong notebook growth of 24.3% year on year, while desktops tripled growth year on year vs Q2 of 2003 to 19.6%, the latter fuelled by strong corporate demand, migration to Windows XP, and more competitive offerings in the retail channel according to IDC.

Ian Gibbs, research analyst with IDC's European Personal Computing team, says that after a 'steady uplift in corporate demand' over the last few quarters, '2004 has seen this activity shift up a gear, with growth now accelerating to double-digit levels. Commercial desktop shipments are strong gainers despite evidence of increasing replacement of desktops with notebooks. Commercial notebook shipments have expanded by 17.8% year on year, the first time since Q2 of 2001 when growth has been slower than for desktops (27.3%).

Government spending has remained strong in the PC market, with rollouts taking place on both a local and national level.

Fierce competition between the retail and direct consumer channels continues to drive the consumer PC market, as does demand for ever-increasing storage of music, video, and image files. Dixons Group, which has closed some High Street stores in order to focus more on out-of-town sites, continued to be the key retail outlet for several top-tier vendors, while Dell is the key player in direct sales.

Dell leads the PC market in the UK with 25.7% market share, grew at 44.3% year on year (its highest since Q3 of 1999) and remains dominant in all but the x86 server and consumer notebook markets.

HP has narrowed the market share gap with Dell to 4.7% with a robust desktop performance of 24.5% growth. Its overall performance was let down by declining shipments in the commercial notebook market, but it continues to lead the consumer notebook segment.

IBM enjoyed a very successful quarter, with 48.6% year on year growth overall, with outstanding growth of 75.1% year on year in the x86 server market. Fujitsu Siemens has leapt from tenth to fourth position, with growth of 163.8% year on year in Q2, recovering from the decline experienced in the same quarter last year. NEC CI had a slightly stifled performance of 5.7% growth in Q2, primarily due to the underperformance of its notebook range.

www.idc.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

• IDC (UK) Ltd
• All news