Global PC shipments jumped by 24% in the first quarter of the year, with 79 million desktops, notebooks and netbooks sold around the world.
The PC industry seems to be bouncing back from the global financial meltdown, with figures just released showing worldwide sales have catapulted back into healthy double-digit growth.
Compared to this time last year, PC shipments are up by 24% reports analyst firm IDC in its Quarterly PC Tracker report.
The company notes that this is “the second straight quarter of double-digit growth”, following strong from a 15.2 % hike in the fourth quarter of 2009.
What’s striking about this isn’t just the rate of recovery, it’s the surge from Q4 to Q1. Christmas is usually the peak for consumer sales, compared to which January to March are doldrums.
“We normally expect a seasonal decline from Q4 to Q1, and this didn’t happen” said IDC analyst Loren Loverde. Instead, a total of 79.1 million desktops, notebooks and netbooks were shipped around the world.
HP sits at the top of the leader board with 19.7% of sales, followed by Acer at 13.6%; Dell at 13.3%; Lenovo, 8.8 percent and Toshiba, 5.8 percent.
Some of the growth would be attributed to the dynamic duo of Microsoft and Intel. The former has enjoyed rave reviews for Windows 7, launched in early Q4 last year and now solidly established as shoppers look to replace aging Vista or even XP boxes.
For its part, Intel’s highly successful launch of its all-new Core 2010 processor range in January – the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 – saw the new chips head straight into desktops and laptops, whereas previous launches of a new processor design have initially been restricted to servers and workstations.
Intel appears to have reaped the benefits of that strategy, reporting earlier this week that its first-quarter profit shot up by a staggering 433 percent over the same period last year, allowing the chipmaker to pocket US$2.4 billion.