14 DAY TRIAL // There has been much talk about the unusually good performance of the IT market during a period normally known as the slow season. For instance, chip sales grew by 58.3% in March, and analysts believe that this year will mark an all-time annual high of over 30%. On the other hand, some concerns were reported about supposedly dropping notebook demand and CPU shortages. Regardless of their gravity, the overall market for mobile personal computers doesn't seem to have been affected overmuch.
End-users spending, according to Gartner, amounted to roughly $36 million, whereas the total number of sold mobile systems reached 49.4 million units. This corresponds to an increase of 43.4 percent compared to the same period of 2009, which makes this the highest year-over-year growth in the past eight years. The main driving force behind this performance was the low-end consumer market.
HP retained its position as number one, with a 19.2 percent share of the market (about 9.4 million shipments), and was followed closely by Acer, which holds an 18.5% share (9.1 million). Dell ranked third, with an 11.5% share (5.6 million units), whereas Toshiba held fourth spot with 4.5 million shipments (9.3% share).
"Mini-notebook PCs were a big part of the bump in mobile PC shipments in the first quarter of 2010, with shipments growing 71 percent over the same period last year," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
"However, mini-notebooks' share slowed in some regions as consumers begin to understand the limitations of mini-notebooks, especially in the face of aggressive price cuts of regular notebooks," she added. "The average selling price (ASP) of mobile PCs was $732 in the first quarter of 2010, a 15.7 percent decline from the first quarter of 2009, when the ASP was $868. The ASP for mobile PCs is expected to stabilize as sales into the professional market will grow, resulting in slightly higher ASPs compared to consumer mobile PCs."