As far as the PC market is concerned, the recession seems to be history. IDC has whipped up some fresh estimates for this year’s first quarter, and it says worldwide PC shipments grew an impressive 24% compared to the same quarter a year ago. During that time, shipments in the U.S. rose by a still-healthy 16.9%.
Those are nice improvements over the first quarter of 2009, when the credit crisis and ensuing chaos pushed PC shipments down by 7.1% worldwide and 3.1% stateside. IDC sees last quarter’s growth as “part of an expected recovery trend that should include strong second quarter performance and lift growth for the year to 15% or higher.”
IDC’s data show Acer and Lenovo enjoyed the most growth by far: 42.5% and 58.3%, respectively. Other vendors still saw growth of more than 20%, except for HP, whose shipments only rose by 19.9%. In terms of market share, not a whole lot has changed compared to the previous quarter:
Vendor | Q1 2009 | Q4 2009 | Q1 2010 |
HP | 20.5% | 21.0% | 19.7% |
Acer | 11.6% | 13.4% | 13.6% |
Dell | 13.6% | 12.4% | 13.3% |
Lenovo | 7.0% | 9.2% | 8.8% |
Toshiba | 5.4% | 5.6% | 5.8% |
Interestingly, Acer now has slightly less of a lead over Dell than in the fourth quarter. The other major players all saw slight sequential market share drops.
Dell is in no danger of losing its place in the U.S., where its 24.1% market share dwarfed Acer’s 13.1%. Apple has lost some ground in the U.S. market compared to the same quarter a year back, though, falling from fourth place to fifth place behind Toshiba.