Overall South African PC shipments slipped by a marginal 0.7% in the first quarter of this year to 313 366 units, says research firm BMI-TechKnowledge.
BMI-T analyst Laurika M"oller says the value of the market fell by 16.1% as the stronger rand exchange rate impacted on prices. She says desktop PC shipments decreased by 3.5% compared to the same period last year, but that notebook computers rose by 5.9% as that segment saw a more even distribution of share among the largest players.
M"oller says a major reason for the overall slip was that last year GautengOnline placed a large order for desktop PCs as part of a project to connect about 1 100 schools.
"The dip is also cyclic as most businesses have placed their annual orders by December and then use the quieter January period to install them," she says.
Servers continue to do well, with BMI-T saying South African x86 server sales rose 27.4% over Q1 2004. HP, IBM and Dell maintained their dominance in this market, securing the top three positions.
Server shipments
Linux server shipments rose by 25.9% in Q1 2005 on a year-on-year basis to about 2 200 units and Windows server shipments jumped 31.4% to 7 200 units in the same time frame.
Worldwide server shipments are seeing moderate to strong growth, with BMI-T principal International Data Corporation saying factory revenue grew 5.3% year-over-year to $12.1 billion in the first quarter of 2005, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of positive overall revenue growth.
Rival research firm Gartner says server revenue in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) surpassed $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2005, a 5.6% increase from the first quarter of 2004. Server shipments surpassed 526 000 units in the first quarter, a 13.2% increase from the same period in 2004.
Gartner says Africa dominates the EMEA server growth rate at 34%, followed by Eastern Europe and Western Europe at 16% and 11% respectively.
Share
