PC Market Grows 1.9% Year-over-Year in Q1 2012 - Gartner

From X-bit Labs: Worldwide PC shipments totaled 89 million units in the first quarter of 2012, a 1.9% increase from the first quarter of 2011, when shipments reached 87.3 million units, according to preliminary results by Gartner. These results exceed Gartner's earlier projections of a 1.2% decline for the quarter. According to analysts from International Data Corp., shipments of PCs increased 2.3% year-over-year.

"In general, the hard-disk drive (HDD) supply shortage had a limited impact on PC supply during Q1 2012. There was a moderate impact on selected markets, such as low-end consumer notebooks and the white-box market in selected regions. Still, low PC demand was able to mask the tight HDD supply overall," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

IDC claims that HDD supply remained a key constraint through most of the first quarter, although PC makers generally had better access to drives than customers in the retail and distribution channels. As a result, large PC vendors were able to maintain shipments by managing inventory or absorbing price increases, while the impact to shipments from smaller PC makers was in line with expectations.

Although PC vendors typically experience low consumer PC sales in the first quarter, Gartner's preliminary results reveal worse-than-normal consumer PC shipment growth. The weak consumer PC demand is in part because of intensified competition for consumers' budgets. Device vendors that focus on a limited product line will get only a small portion of the consumer wallet. Companies such as Apple can be clear winners because of comprehensive product/service offerings, which gain a large part of consumers' spending.

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