Fourth Quarter of 2008 saw PC sales grind to halt worldwide, US crashes

By Stan Beer
Thursday, 15 January 2009 10:31

Market

The economic crisis has hit the worldwide PC industry hard in the fourth quarter of 2008, causing it to suffer its worst growth rate since 2002. The normally high growth market of Asia has seen its worst result on record, while the US PC market nose dived in the final quarter of the year, according to a new report.

New figures from research group Gartner show worldwide PC shipments totaled 78.1 million units, a 1.1% increase from the fourth quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, Asia/Pacific grew just 1.8% while the US crashed by 10% compared to the previous corresponding quarter

“The United States experienced steeper than expected shipment declines due to the recession. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region was also affected by the economic slow down across key countries,” said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group.

“Asia/Pacific recorded the worst shipment growth since Gartner started its PC statistics research. Latin America met expectations, but its growth was much lower than in the past.”

There was some good news in that the netbook (mini-notebook) market literally exploded during the quarter. However, PC revenue experienced a record decline. Steep average selling price (ASP) declines, as well as robust growth of low-priced systems, including mini-notebooks, contributed to the drop.

Market leader, Hewlett-Packard managed to grow above the worldwide average in the fourth quarter of 2008, however its year-on-year growth was its lowest since its merger with Compaq in 2003. HP did well in EMEA by aggressively promoting the mini-notebook segment, but it was impacted by sales in the US market.

Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q08 (Thousands of Units)

Company	4Q08 Shipments	4Q08 Market Share (%)	4Q07 Shipments	4Q07 Market Share (%)	4Q08-4Q07 Growth (%)
Hewlett-Packard	14,915.4	19.1	14,405.0	18.7	3.5
Dell Inc.	10,319.7	13.2	10,971.7	14.2	-5.9
Acer	9,637.3	12.3	7,351.3	9.5	31.1
Lenovo	5,549.2	7.1	5,808.4	7.5	-4.5
Toshiba	3,654.9	4.7	3,026.9	3.9	20.7
Others	34,006.4	43.6	35,632.7	46.2	-4.6
Total	78,082.9	100.0	77,195.9	100.0	1.1