HP heads for more Dell hits

DELL IS LIKELY to be dealt more misery by Hewlett Packard on the PC front, market research firm iSuppli claimed.

The firm said 2006 "will go down as the year of Hewlett Packard" - as opposed to, say 2007, when possibly ex-Hewlett Packard people will go down.

Matt Wilson, principal analyst at iSuppli, said that HP has PC momentum on its side and management changes at Dell make it likely the direct dealer will be diverted.

The firm produced a chart showing the top five PC original equipment manufacturing ranking for Q4 of 2006. Numbers are in thousands of unit shipments. µ

Rank	Vendor	Q4 2006	Q4 2005	YoY	Q4 share
1	HP	11,606	9,583	21.1%	17.4%
2	Dell	9,642	10,548	-8.6%	14.5%
3	Lenovo	4,750	4,388	8.2%	7.1%
4	Acer	4,402	3,084	42.7%	6.6%
5	Toshiba	2,450	2,020	21.3%	3.7%
	Others	33,848	33,101	2.3%	50.7%
	Total	66,698	62,724	6.3%	100%