Apple becomes top-five computer seller in France
updated 11:15 am EST, Mon February 22, 2010
Apple, Samsung make large strides in Euro share
Apple has made significant strides in Western Europe by gaining a fifth place spot in France during the fall, analysts at Gartner said on Monday. The company pushed out Toshiba after a 43.5 percent jump in its Mac shipments year-over-year to 182,000 for the quarter, or enough to claim 5.5 percent of the country's market. It was the fastest-growing major computer builder in the country where ASUS grew 27.6 percent to claim 10.2 percent of France's PC business.
The spike was credited by Gartner to the strength of MacBook sales even as Apple has refused to dip into the netbook market. Updates to the iMac and Mac mini also shored up desktop sales.
Acer, HP and Dell headed up the French market with 24.7, 24.4 and 10.4 percent of the market each. In the UK, Samsung's combination of netbooks along with a new wave of mainstream PCs saw it jump a very large 98.2 percent to grab 6.5 percent of the market, occupying fifth place. Acer, HP, Dell and Toshiba also led in that territory but had a much more even spread than in France, as they had respective 19.1, 18.9, 16.5 and 10.4 percent shares. Germany had a more unusual mix with Acer (19.4), HP (11.1), ASUS (9.9), Dell (8.5) and local brand Medion (7.8) taking the leading portions of the field.
Despite their growth, neither Apple nor Samsung was large enough to claim a berth in the top five for Western Europe, where Acer led with 23.1 percent. HP came close with 21.3 percent, but Dell had just 9.9 percent. ASUS and Toshiba followed behind with 8 and 6.2 percent each.
