Global computer sales improved 7.6% in the third quarter of the year compared with a year ago, says international research company Gartner.
However, the figures were below Gartner's expectations due to soft consumer demand in the US and Western Europe, as these regions are still being hit by the aftershock of the recent global recession. More than 88.3 million total units were shipped during the quarter.
Gartner had expected third-quarter shipments to improve by 12.7%. Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, says the quarter is traditionally a strong period led by back-to-school sales.
In the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, PC sales grew at a slower rate than worldwide sales, with total shipments of 27.3 million units, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%.
“The single-digit growth experienced in the third quarter signals a slow down in the EMEA PC market after a very strong first half of 2010,” says Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.
Atwal attributes this to consumers and businesses delaying purchasing decisions until the fourth quarter, when festive season specials are expected.
The emerging markets of Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa saw better growth but not enough to offset the weakness of the PC market in Western Europe, says Gartner.
Channel slows
However, he cautioned that traditional box-droppers would see their distribution channel market share eroded from 36% to 25% within the next four years, as an increasingly hungry retail sector bites into the space, which is worth billions of rands a year.
Gartner's latest research seems to back up this statement, as it pointed out that, globally, PC shipments into the channel “significantly” exceeded PC demand in the second quarter of 2010. As a result, most PC vendors spent the third quarter of the year cleaning out inventory, but could not use price reductions to stimulate demand, as margins were constrained by more expensive components and a weaker euro in the first half of the year.
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Channel under threat
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