14 DAY TRIAL // If the words of on IT market analyst firm aren't enough, users can rest assured that the PC industry really is on the rise again, now that Gartner has published a press release with similar findings.
Users may or may not have learned, about a day ago or so, that market analysts had finished checking what had happened on the PC market during the second quarter of the ongoing year (Q2, 2011).
Among other things, IDC found that overall sales had increased by a slight margin while Acer lost third place as top supplier to Lenovo.
It turns out that Gartner reached a similar conclusion, its own tally showing a rise of 2.3% in overall PC shipments compared to the same period of last year.
Overall, the number of units reached 85 million, of which HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS accounted for 17.5%, 12.5%, 12%, 10.9% and 5.2%, respectively.
"Vendor's performances have become variable as they have had to deal with significant inventory buildup, changes to their product mix, and the fact that growth has been coming mostly from emerging markets,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
“Vendors are having to shift resources away from mature consumer markets. They are also invested in developing media tablets, many of which launched in the first half of 2011."
Normally, a rise would be seen as good news, especially knowing the troubles in Europe, the one that has put notebook makers in a tight spot.
Still, Gartner had originally predicted an increase of 6.7%, which makes the reported performance seem somewhat underwhelming, albeit still encouraging.
"After strong growth in shipments of consumer PCs for four years, driven by strong demand for mini-notebooks and low-priced consumer notebooks, the market is shifting to modest, but steady growth,
“The slow overall growth indicates that the PC market is still in a period of adjustment, which began in the second half of 2010."