Worldwide PC shipments reached over 90 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009. This marks a 22.1 increase from the same period the year prior.
The preliminary results by Gartner Inc, an information technology research firm, indicate the strongest quarter-over-quarter growth rate in the global PC market in the last seven years.
“These preliminary results indicate the recovery of the PC market on a global level,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
“Shipment growth was largely driven by low-priced consumer mobile PCs, both in regular notebooks and mini-notebooks. As economic weakness continued, buyers became extremely price sensitive. Low-priced PCs were good enough for many average consumers,” Ms. Kitagawa said.
“Windows 7 was launched during the fourth quarter of 2009. Though the new operating system launch did not create additional PC demand, the launch was a good market tool during holiday sales.”
HP maintained its position as the strongest global PC brand, shipping 17,792,200 units, taking up 19.8 per cent of the market share, followed at a distance by Acer and Dell, which shipped 12,188,200 units and 10,397,100 units, with market shares of 13.5 per cent and 11.5 per cent respectively.
For the entire year, PC shipments totalled 306 million units, a 5.2 per cent increase on 2008.
