The EMEA hardware market was buffered from the cold wind ofrecession late last year as a result of strong sales of mini-notebooks in therun up to Christmas.
According to IDC’s figures for the fourth quarter of lastyear the PC market could only produce growth of 1.8% year on year but Western Europe produced levels of 11.9% that were buoyed bynetbook demand.
"Asexpected, the Christmas season saw continued uptake of mini-notebooks driven bystrong vendor push, with several manufacturers launching new products from Octoberonwards, stimulating fierce competition for retail shelf space," saidEszter Morvay, senior research analyst for IDC.
But therewere warnings from the analyst house that the rest of this year would not be as strong as consumerspending inevitably declined in the face of continuing difficulty in theeconomy.
But the analyst house said that the increasingly importantrole played by the telco companies in driving sales of notebooks and netbookswould continue to contribute to market growth.
In terms of the vendor rankings for PC shipments for Q4across EMEA the top position was taken by Hewlett-Packard with Acer, Dell andAsus following up with all bar Dell producing increases in market share.
For the full year the same order of vendors dominated themarket with HP holding 20.1% market share of EMEA PC shipments followed by Aceron 17.1% and Dell on 10.7%.
In a sign that the expectations in the industry are of market shrinkage last week Notebook SKU builder Compal slashed its annual shipmentand spending forecast in the face of the shrinking market.
The Taiwan-based firm is the world’s second largest contractnotebook builder and supplies Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo.
Compa said it expected total 2009 shipments to come in at around 32 million, threemillion lower than previously forecast, and added that it planned to halve its spendingplans by 50% this year.
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