BizJournals Portfolio
Home >   Business Views, Opinions and Blogs >   Business Blogs >   Tech Observer >  

A Little Good News About The Pc Market

Tech Observer

by Kevin Maney
Main
Google Making Us Smarter. Or Maybe Dumber. No, Wait --   Search Advertising's Scalability Problems

Recent Blog Posts

Links

Oct 15 2008 10:37am EDT

A Little Good News About the PC Market

Kevin Maney writes: Amid the gloom of the financial markets, it's easy to forget that regular people all around the world still have a lot of good reasons to go out and buy a computer. Gartner Group's numbers show that worldwide PC shipments grew 15% in the third quarter. While the U.S. grew by a hair, most of the growth came from Europe, the Middle East and Africa -- but that's still good for the U.S. The top two PC makers globally are U.S. companies: Hewlett-Packard and Dell.


Let's also hope that Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa is proven right. She says that the strongest PC segment -- mobile PCs -- will grow 20% the next three quarters vs. the year before. So in the teeth of the economic crisis, Gartner is predicting strong growth for laptops.

There might be a looming problem here for Dell and H-P, though. With the economy down, the most excitement in computing is coming from small, stripped-down notebooks that cost less than $500, like the ASUS EeePC. The strongest players in that market so far are Asian companies ASUS and Acer. Gartner warns that the other computer makers need to respond.

...

Comments

If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.


Connect With Portfolio.com
Like Portfolio on Facebook

Come on, like us—you know you want to.

Follow Portfolio on Twitter

Follow us and if you're an innovative entrepreneur, we'll return the favor.

The Mix

Today's top stories, conversation starters, and the back nine business bites.

spotlight on

Slideshows

500 Startups Hits New York

Dave McClure's brainchild makes its way to New York and introduces East Coast money folks to some intriguing new companies. View Slideshow