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Laptops thrive in a weak PC market
Friday, August 02 2002
by Ciaran Buckley


The number of laptops shipped worldwide increased during the second quarter,
while shipments of desktops continued to slip, according to Gartner Dataquest. 

The number of laptops shipped worldwide in the second quarter of 2002 amounted to
6.9 million units, a 6.1 percent increase from the second quarter of 2001 when
shipments hit 6.5 million units. By comparison, PC shipments declined one percent
in the second quarter of 2002 compared to the second quarter of last year.



"Continuing growth in mobile PCs provides some good news in a worldwide PC
market that overall remains weak," said Charles Smulders, vice president of
Gartner Dataquest's Computing Platforms Worldwide group. "The mobile PC market
grew in most regions except for Japan and Latin America."



Smulders also said that the US laptop market grew 9.3 percent year-over-year,
supported by back-to-school purchases, as well as orders from educational
institutions. The overall trend in laptop growth is attributed to factors like
the narrowing price gap between desktops and similarly specified laptops. The
cost of supporting laptops has also fallen, he said, due to better support for
laptop hardware in Windows XP and Windows 2000. 



Additionally, companies find that laptops are better suited to the modern
workforce, who need access to computers while in the office, at home and on the
road, the research firm claimed.



Dell and Hewlett-Packard were the biggest sellers of laptops worldwide, as Dell
increased shipments by 10.6 percent in the last quarter, to almost 1.025 million,
representing around 14.9 percent of the market. Conversely, HP shipments declined
0.4 percent to 1.012 million units as it captured around 14.7 percent of the
market.  HP was the only firm ranked by Gartner that saw shipments fall.



Toshiba, which has traditionally been a weak laptop brand in Ireland, saw
tremendous growth with shipments up over 11 percent to around 885,000 in the
second quarter, giving it almost 13 percent market share. Gartner attributed this
significant increase in shipments to the growing popularity of Toshiba laptops in
both United States and Western Europe. And the company claims that Ireland is
becoming an ever-stronger market, with laptop sales up by almost 90 percent here
between the first quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002 and a doubling of
its Irish market share in that period. 



IBM, which ranked fourth on Gartner's list, with 10.7 percent market share,
shipped almost 740,000 units, a growth of only 0.6 percent over last year. Sony,
which came in a bottom of the list, saw its shipments climb by 5.2 percent to
around 490,000 units, representing just over 7 percent of the market. Its worth
noting that all other manufacturers accounted for almost 40 percent of the market
and they shipped around 2.75 million units to consumers, 7 percent more than they
did this time a year ago.