Recent figures from analyst, IDC, reveal the PC market in Australia reached 578,500 units in the fourth quarter of 2002, a 10.8 percent increase from the third quarter and 10.6 percent year on year increase. PC sales in the Asia Pacific region expanded 10 percent in 2002 over 2001.
Overall, Australian PC shipments reached 2,167,000 for 2002, according to IDC, representing a year-on-year growth of 7.9 percent. In results similar to that released by Gartner earlier this month, the star performer for the sector was portable computers, which experienced a growth of 21.7 percent compared to 4.7 percent for desktops and 5.5 percent for Intel servers.
According to IDC, the market was led by Hewlett-Packard (HP) with 18.0 percent market share, followed by Dell whose advertising campaign has increased its market share to 13.4 percent in the fourth quarter over 11.0 percent in the third quarter. Acer held the third largest fourth-quarter market share at 6.7 percent, but posted year-on-year growth of 154 percent. IBM registered 6.6 percent fourth-quarter market share.
However, although IDC has predicted that PC sales in 2003 will be boosted by the first post-Y2K refresh cycle in the business market, they have also forecast that an "uncertainty in the economy and political environment" will have an effect on buying trends in the second half of the year, and that this will be heavily influenced by escalating tensions between the USA, North Korea and Iraq.
IDC also commented on the Tablet PC--which has received interest from industries such as health, mining and finance--predicting that both convertible and slate tablets will appeal to users seeking increased mobility without a compromise in performance, who are willing to pay the higher purchase price.
