PC industry analysts cited a saturated market as the primary reason U.S. PC unit shipments tailed off during the second quarter compared to the same period in 1999.
International Data Corp., Framingham, Mass., and Dataquest, San Jose, Calif., said preliminary PC shipment numbers for the second quarter slowed dramatically with the companies reporting increases of only 7.2 percent and 11.5 percent, respectively. PC shipments totaled 11.7 million, according to both firms.
A saturated U.S. PC market was cited as the reason for such low sales, and vendors need to convince consumers to upgrade their aging PCs quicker, said Charles Smulders, principal analyst for Dataquest’s PC program. In the first quarter of 1999 Dataquest had PC growth at 32.6 percent higher than during the same period in 1998.
Hewlett-Packard was the best performer for the quarter posting gains of 45.2 percent, said IDC, and 44 percent, according to Dataquest. Both firms gave HP 10.4 percent of the market placing it solidly in third place in the U.S. market.
Entry-level PC maker eMachines fell off both companies charts after having become one of the top five PC vendors during the first quarter of 2000.
Dell retained its number one position on the IDC list shipping 2.29 million units and increasing its market share to 19.6 percent from 16.6 percent in 1999. Compaq faired poorly dropping two points of market share to 14.5 percent and slipping in units shipped by 5.6 percent to 1.67 million for the quarter.
Gateway had a solid quarter garnering 8.2 percent of the market on 964,000 PC shipped. IBM continued its fall as one of the PC vendor leaders. IDC data had Big Blue owning just 6.1 percent of the market on unit shipments that fell 18.5 percent to 714,000.
Dataquest also had Dell in first place shipping 2.19 million units, up 28.4 percent, for 18.7 percent of the market, up two points from the same period last year. Compaq fell on Dataquest’s list dropping more than two percentage points to 14.5 on 1.7 million units shipped, down 4.5 percent from 1999.
Gateway came in fourth on Dataquest’s list with 8.1 percent market share, the same amount it held last year, on 953,000 units shipped, an increase of 11.8 percent. IBM performed just as poorly in Dataquest’s study losing 2.2 percentage points of share for 6.1 percent on 715,000 units shipped, which was 18 percent lower than in 1999.
Dataquest also included Apple giving it 4.4 percent of the market on 520,000 units shipped. Apple share was basically unchanged, while its shipment numbers increases 11.1 percent.
