PC shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have
declined for the fifth successive quarter following weak demand
from corporate buyers.
Despite PC shipments increasing in Eastern Europe, a 6%
year-on-year decline in units shipped in Western Europe dragged
down the PC market for the EMEA region as a whole by 0.3%, quashing
hopes of a recovery, according to figures released by Dataquest, a
unit of analyst group Gartner.
The second quarter results for EMEA represent the first drop in six
months, Brian Gammage, principal analyst for Dataquest, said. "Over
the last two quarters the decline in Western Europe was not big
enough to push the whole region into negative territory. The third
quarter of 2001 was the low point and it looked like we were going
into growth again. This has dashed hopes for a PC market recovery
later this year," Gammage said.
In total, 8.65 million units were shipped in the second quarter.
Eastern Europe continued to show double-digit growth, but with
Western Europe accounting for about 70 percent of EMEA PC
shipments, there is no growth overall, Gammage said.
"Western Europe has now declined in five successive quarters. That
is not good news," Gammage said, adding that he expects modest
EMEA-wide year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter. Full recovery
of the EMEA PC market is not expected until the second half of
2003, he said.
Of the top five vendors in EMEA, numbers two and five, Dell
Computer and Acer, were the only ones to see year-on-year shipment
growth, up 5.4% and 33.3% respectively. Market leader
Hewlett-Packard (HP), number three Fujitsu Siemens Computer Holding
and the fourth player, IBM, saw shipments fall respectively by
11.6%, 10.6% and 17.8%.
"Acer got promoted due to HP and Compaq merging," said Gammage. The
company's growth figure looks good, but it does not represent
actual sales as Acer is building inventory to support expansion in
distribution and retail, Gammage said.
Results from research company IDC told a similar story, though IDC
saw a 2.2% year-on-year decline in EMEA-wide PC shipments, with
Western Europe down 6%, Eastern Europe up 13% and Africa up
17%.
Further slow consumer spending, except on notebook PCs, and
continued cautiousness among corporate buyers caused the decline,
IDC said. France was the worst market for PC vendors, while the UK
and Ireland benefited from higher market confidence, according to
IDC.