Shipments of mobile PCs grew by 6.1% in the second quarter, despite
a decline in the overall PC market, according to a Dataquest
study.
In the second quarter, 6.9 million mobile PCs were shipped
worldwide, up from 6.5 million last year. US shipments were up 9.3%
from the same period last year, but shipments fell in Japan and
Latin America.
"In the past, buying a notebook would compromise performance, but
that's not so anymore," said Charles Smulders, chief analyst at
Dataquest.
Notebook purchasers no longer need such high performance from
desktop machines, and are also interested in behind wireless LAN
technologies.
One factor underscoring the increased performance of notebooks is
the recent spate of announcements from vendors placing desktop
processors in notebook computers, a trend Smulders called "one of
the most interesting developments in the PC market in the past six
months".
Users of these machines are trading some mobility for performance,
but interest has been high in several regions, such as Asia-Pacific
and the US, he said.
Dell Computer led all manufacturers in shipments in the second
quarter, moving 1.03 million units. Hewlett-Packard was just behind
with 1.01 million units, a number that includes shipments from
Compaq.
The two notebook leaders have been heading in different directions,
however, as Dell's shipments grew 10.6% from last year's second
quarter, while HP's shipments fell 0.4%.
HP's stagnant performance has probably been affected by the massive
integration and consolidation of the HP and Compaq notebook lines,
Smulders said. HP's performance in the second half of the year will
largely depend on how well it manages its integration, he
said.
Toshiba's 885,000 shipments ranked third among vendors, but Toshiba
showed the most growth from the second quarter of last year,
improving shipments by 11.4 %.
As the Japanese market for notebooks fell 11% from the second
quarter of 2001, Toshiba increased its shipments to Western Europe
and the US.
However, compared with the first quarter of 2002, Toshiba's market
share declined. The first quarter tends to be a big one for
Toshiba, as Japan's financial year ends in March, Smulders
said.
More notebooks were shipped from white-box manufacturers in the
second quarter than from any other single source. White-box
manufacturers are small, mostly local vendors that build PCs
without brand names. They shipped 2.75 million notebooks in the
second quarter, up 7% from last year. This represents 39.9% of the
market.
Worldwide, the US is the largest market for notebooks, followed by
Western Europe and Japan, Smulders said.
Dataquest expects the notebook market to continue to outperform the
overall PC market through the end of the year, and well into 2003.