PC market grows without Dell

Could the unprecedented slip be enough to push Dell to AMD?

Is Dell losing its shine?

PC shipments increased by 13.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, according to research firm Gartner, thanks in part to sales in emerging markets and to consumers. Overall, 57 million PCs, notebooks and servers based on x86 chips were sent to customers. Rival IDC came up with similar results and rankings although the exact numbers are slightly different.

But Dell did not grow that fast. The PC maker saw shipments rise worldwide by 10.2 percent from the first quarter of 2005, resulting in a decline in market share from 16.9 percent to 16.5 percent.

In the US, Dell saw shipments rise by only 0.2 percent when the overall market grew by 7.4 percent, dropping its market share from 32 percent to 29.8 percent.

It's a significant change because Dell has grown faster — and generally by a substantial margin — than the PC market as a whole for several years. The company hasn't seen shipments grow this slowly since the third quarter of 2001, when the rest of the industry was contracting.

Gartner's Charles Smulders combed through the data and found that Dell has grown faster than the market on an annual basis since 1989. Dell might have grown faster than the market before that, but Gartner doesn't have the numbers.

"It is a pretty interesting point that they have reached," Smulders said. "They are challenged in delivering to their profitability expectations and with the current consumer pricing environment. It is because they are focused on Intel while other competitors have adopted AMD and been able to hit lower price points."

HP, meanwhile, is staging a comeback. HP shipment numbers grew by 22.3 percent compared with the same period the year before. As a result, its worldwide market share grew from 13.8 percent in the first quarter of 2005 to 14.9 percent in the first quarter of 2006. In the US, HP's shipments grew by 15.3 percent and saw its market share rise to 18.5 percent.

Number four Acer continued to wear the crown for the fastest-growing PC maker. The Taiwanese manufacturer's PC shipments grew 45 percent in the first quarter and now has 5 percent of the world market. Lenovo is ranked third, with 6 percent of the market. Lenovo's shipments grew by 10 percent.

Gartner further added that, in processors, AMD gained market share over Intel in the last seven quarters.

Apple so far hasn't been a boon to Intel. The Mac maker, ranked fifth in the US but not in the top five worldwide, saw its US market share decline from 3.6 percent to 3.5 percent. Apple's worldwide share is around 2.3 percent.

Story URL: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39264185,00.htm