“Western Europe showed continued growth in the second quarter, recovering quickly from the slowdown seen in the first half of 2009,” Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said.
“The PC market has so far defied the general economic downturn, but the real test will be in the second half of 2010, since we saw a stronger second half in 2009.
“The strong performance in the second quarter of 2010 was partly due to a weak second quarter of 2009. For a better comparison, the PC market in Western Europe grew 6 percent compared with the second quarter of 2008, indicating not only a recovery but good underlying market strength.
"Economic concerns in several southern European countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece) created uncertainty in the PC market and caused more volatility in the second quarter of 2010, rather than softening overall demand.”
According to Gartner’s research, the consumer market continued to perform significantly above the professional segment, driven by consumer notebooks and expanding sales of all-in-one desktop PCs.
Demand for mini-notebooks slowed down, especially in Western Europe, and for the first time, mini-notebook growth reached less than 10 percent, below the growth rate of standard mobile PCs.
“The improvement in demand from the professional market was relatively modest in the second quarter. The professional market has been affected by the economic conditions and unit price increases, causing some PC purchases to be delayed,” Gartner said in a statement.
Despite achieving a 15 percent rise in PC shipments from the same period in 2009, the UK market remained the weakest of larger markets in Western Europe.
“There is no doubt that the introduction of the austerity measures in the UK has hindered any anticipated improvement in the underlying demand for PCs. We don’t expect this to change for the rest of 2010,” Gartner said.
PC shipments in France rose by 28.9 percent in the second quarter from the previous comparable period, with Germany delivering an increase of 22.9 percent.
Principal research analyst at Gartner Meike Escherich said that although growth in the German market was based on a weak second quarter in 2009, when compared to the second quarter of 2008, Germany’s PC market had delivered an increase of 18 percent, and definitely pointed to a return to normal demand patterns.
“PC prices have declined by 15 to 20 percent year-on-year for the last two years, but the second quarter of 2010 showed that such steep declines are no longer sustainable, due to an increase in bill-of-materials costs for PCs (screens, memory, etc.) and the appreciation of the dollar against the euro,” Escherich added.
Source: Gartner, Inc
