Gartner: Dell shipments slip as Acer and Toshiba gain share
updated 07:45 pm EDT, Wed October 14, 2009
Two leaders nearly tied in US distribution numbers
Dell's computer shipments have continued a steep decline, as competitors including Acer, Toshiba and Apple have gained market share. The latest data from research firm Gartner appears to corroborate many points from an earlier report issued from IDC.
Despite IDC's suggestion that HP has finally beat Dell's US shipments, Gartner puts both companies nearly at a tie with Dell retaining a meager 0.5 percent lead. Acer has proven capable of maintaining momentum, holding the third spot with 61 percent growth quarter-to-quarter.
“The consumer mobile PC market drove U.S. shipment growth in the third quarter of 2009, fueled by back to school sales,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner's principal analyst. "Consumers were comfortable buying PCs, but they were relentlessly looking for bargains. Our preliminary research shows consumer mobile PC ASPs declined more than 20 percent compared to a year ago.”
Despite the droves of consumers looking for the cheapest price tags, both reports agree that Apple saw a jump in shipments. The high-end computer maker reclaimed the fourth spot in the US market with shipments of over 1.5 million Macs. Earlier reports suggest Apple has remained generally immune to the ASP collapse that has slashed revenues for many of its competitors.
Gartner analysts do not anticipate that Windows 7 will have a significant impact on overall PC shipments. The firm is expecting a 29.6 percent growth for the fourth quarter, although the forecast is being compared to extremely poor sales in the fourth quarter of last year.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2008
There are always going to be some
people that don't automatically run to the cheapest product on the floor. Perceived value or otherwise, a higher pricetag is a lure to some people. I guess I could say I'm a snob but in my family, even though we weren't rich, still wanted to purchase goods of higher quality, be it cars, or appliances or clothing. Why would people get better jobs and educations just to buy the cheapest stuff they could find. I'm somewhat puzzled about that. America wasn't always that way, but suddenly it's become fashionable to buy low-quality netbooks while much better quality notebooks collect dust. Beats me. I guess Apple users for the most part don't care if they think they're getting better quality and better service even if they pay more money. That's what the people I asked said they switched for. Since the polls claim that people are more satisfied with Apple products I guess to some degree it is true.
Whatever, Apple is still making money and increasing market share, so something positive is working for them.