Skip to main content

Worldwide PC Shipments Grew 27 Percent in Q1

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 84.3 million units in the first quarter (Q1) of 2010, a 27.4 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009, according to preliminary market study results by Gartner, Inc.

These first quarter results have exceeded Gartner's earlier market outlook. Gartner had been expecting first quarter PC shipments to grow 22 percent.

"The stronger-than-expected growth was led by a robust recovery in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) PC market, which grew 24.8 percent in the first quarter of 2010," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "All other regions recorded double-digit growth rates, although the U.S. and Latin America were slightly lower than what we had expected."

In the U.S., PC shipments totaled 17.4 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 20.2 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009. The U.S. market has registered two consecutive quarters of double-digit shipment growth.

PC shipments in EMEA totaled 27.1 million units, a 24.8 percent increase from the first quarter last year. The first quarter volume was the biggest on record. The EMEA market was boosted by exceptional mobile consumer market demand, which continues to grow unabated. The professional market is starting to see some upside mainly coming from small businesses, rather than large businesses. However, the pipeline is positive with large tenders for major hardware refreshes coinciding with Windows 7 deployments.

In Asia-Pacific, PC shipments reached 26.5 million units, a 36.9 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009. PC shipments in China grew 45.4 percent; this growth was led by consumer PC demand due to the Chinese New Year holidays, when promotions and students' winter holidays stimulated purchases, especially of mobile PCs.

The PC market in Latin America grew 35.4 percent, with shipments reaching 7.2 million units in the first quarter of 2010. Brazil has a large volume of local shipments because of high tariffs imposed on imported PCs. Consequently, growth in Latin America largely depends on these vendors.

In Japan, PC shipments totaled 4.3 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 14.7 percent increase from the same period last year. Two major growth drivers are the continuous demand in the education market and introductions of new products in the consumer market.

Popular posts from this blog

AI Investment Drives Semiconductor Demand

The global semiconductor industry is experiencing a historic acceleration driven by surging investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and computing power. According to the latest IDC worldwide market study, 2025 marks a defining year in which AI's pervasive impact reconfigures industry economics and propels record growth across the compute segment of the semiconductor market. Semiconductor Market Development IDC’s latest data reveals an insightful projection: The compute segment of the semiconductor market is on track to grow 36 percent in 2025, reaching $349 billion. This segment, which encompasses logic chips powering CPUs, GPUs, and AI accelerators, will sustain a robust 12 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2030. These numbers underscore not only current momentum but a structural shift driven by large-scale adoption of AI workloads spanning cloud, edge, and on-premises deployment models. The scale of investment is unprecedented. As organizations ...