Chinese PC Firm Takes Third Spot After IBM Buy

Dell retained its position as the world's largest PC maker in 2005, with Hewlett-Packard still at number two, according to a preliminary ranking from analysts iSuppli Corporation. Meanwhile Chinese manufacturer Lenovo has gained the number three spot with its acquisition of IBM's PC division.

Lenovo, which itself was in seventh position in 2004 benefited from strong market conditions as well as the acquisition, according to senior analyst Matthew Wilkins, increasing its PC shipments to 13.9m units in 2005, up 222.9% from 4.3m in 2004. The company finished the year with a market share of 6.4%.

IBM was the world's third largest PC maker in 2004, before the acquisition took place, but Lenovo also made the most of the wave of strong growth throughout the PC industry in 2005. Global PC shipments rose to 219.2m units in 2005, up 14.7% from 191.2m in 2004, beating the 13.2% rise in 2004 and confounding predictions of a slowdown. The rise of notebooks and the arrival of multi-core processors on the desktop were key factors, the latter the new battleground for Intel and AMD.

The year finished strongly with global PC shipments up to 62.7m units in the fourth quarter, up 14.7% on the third quarter and up 18.7% when compared with the fourth quarter of 2004, the preliminary estimates suggest.

Dell and HP accounted for 17.2% and 14.7% of 2005 PC shipments respectively, with the gap between them widening from 3.7 million units in 2004 to 5.5m in 2005. Acer Inc. and Fujitsu Siemens Computers came fourth and fifth with shipments of 9.6 and 8 million units and market shares of 4.9 and 3.7% respectively. Among the top-five PC makers, only Acer managed sequential growth in excess of the overall market, at 24.1%.

iSuppli predicts another good y ear in 2006 with shipments forecast to rise 11.6% supported by the promised launch of Windows Vista and the continued rise of multi-core processor technology.

iSuppli is online at www.isuppli.com

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