Worldwide PC Shipments Decline, But Less Than Anticipated

With a volatile economy, a lot of people are keeping close tabs on computer shipments to see if maybe, just maybe, they’ve finally hit rock bottom. IDC published its latest quarterly worldwide PC shipments tracker, and while PC shipments still shrunk, it wasn’t as bad as forecast. Paul Otellini, Intel’s CEO, believes the bottom has been hit.

The figures from IDC are telling. During the first quarter of 2009, PC shipments dwindled worldwide by 7.1%, to 63.5 million units. Since IDC’s prediction for this quarter was a decline of 8.2%, there’s actually some reason to be optimistic if your life depends on selling computers. According to IDC, the quarterly results were relatively good (compared to the predictions) because of falling PC prices (think netbooks), and new PC buyers around the world.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini had to deliver some fairly bad quarterly figures for his company, but despite that, he believes that the PC market has hit the rocky bottom. “We believe PC sales bottomed out during the first quarter and that the industry is returning to normal seasonal patterns,” Otellini said in a statement, “I believe the worst is now behind us from an inventory correction and demand level adjustment perspective.” However, the company refuses to give out a financial forecast because of the uncertain economy.

IDC also stated that the worldwide marketshare figures for computer makers are still the same. “HP [holds] 20.5 percent of the market, followed by Dell (13.6 percent), Acer (11.6 percent), Lenovo (7 percent), and Toshiba (5.4 percent), according to IDC’s numbers.”

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