Click to enlarge |
And in another leg-up for desktop PC market, the annual growth improved from the fourth quarter in all regions with Europe and Asia/Pacific (except Japan) showing the biggest improvements.
For its part, Japan recovered from a double-digit decline in the fourth quarter, but was the only region with declining volume as the United States moved back into growth mode.
The global growth of 10.9 per cent was up from the single-digit growth experienced over the previous three quarters and was up on the forecast growth of 8.5 per cent.
Interestingly, IDC believes that peak growth in 2004 and 2005 had more to do with slower growth at the end of 2006 than users waiting for the new operating system – particularly as vendors such as HP, Acer, Toshiba, and Apple saw strong retail and Portable PC growth through the end of the year.
