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PC shipment will recover but takes different shape
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Monday, December 9, 2002
Worldwide PC shipments will see just more than 1 percent growth in 2002, but that doesn't mean competition in the market is cooling down.
IDC today reported that total shipments in 2002 will reach 136 million, followed by an 8 percent growth in 2003, as business and consumer segments improve.
Risks from economic and political factors may also constrain future growth, although IDC predicted projects shipment growth of 8.3 percent in 2003 and 11 percent in 2004 before shipments slow again.
"We continue to expect slow worldwide PC shipment growth for the next several quarters, before the market accelerates in the latter half of 2003," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, in a statement. "While business spending has been slow to recover, we believe it will pick up in the first half of 2003, and market drivers like portable adoption, wireless networking, broadband adoption, new designs, media convergence and TCO improvements will support moderate growth."
Meanwhile, market research from Giga Information Group Inc. reports that the PC industry's cold climate has forced the top PC vendors to turn up the heat on the competition.
According to Giga's recent report, "Quarterly PC Vendor and Market Update: Fourth Quarter 2002," the current tier-one vendors -- Dell Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Toshiba Corp. -- are all aggressively going after the few buyers out there. With the successful execution of the HP/Compaq merger, Giga said that gains made during the merger proceedings by Dell and Toshiba may be vulnerable. IBM, meanwhile, is banking on utility computing through its On Demand initiative, which could emerge as a strong move against Dell and Microsoft.
"There has been no major event that will drive money back into the PC segment, but on the positive side, recent financial results from HP and Dell are better than expected, indicating there are grounds for an improved financial outlook for 2003," said Rob Enderle, a Giga VP and research fellow, in a statement.
Dell continues to drive hard in the PC segment and remains best in class in terms of financial performance, making it the company against which all other PC companies are measured, Enderle said, adding that it also has the strongest small form-factor desktop PC in terms of industrial design showing new and surprising strength in this area.
HP's financial performance was significantly better than expected in Q3, showing better than expected merger execution so far, Giga reported. According to recent market share numbers, Toshiba saw even bigger success than Dell and has regained the lead in laptop mindshare if not market share, the market researcher said.
IBM, meanwhile, has rolled out its On Demand computing initiative, which positions IBM as the leader in a future where computing technology is delivered as a utility, according to Giga.
"This is one of the more likely futures and we believe it could emerge as a strong move against Dell and Microsoft," Enderle said, adding that it also appears to forecast a period when IBM will be out of the PC business -- around 2008 -- if the future it anticipates becomes the norm.
"In that potential future world, most of the other vendors would likely have to drop out as well," Enderle said. "We see a much stronger emergence of desktop equipment from large-scale equipment manufacturers that are not at all similar to the mostly private-branded PCs of today."
By: DocMemory
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