Notebooks drive the Italian PC market

THE ITALIAN PC market seems to be doing rather well for itself, with market research outfit IDC saying the boot-shaped nation has enjoyed 13.5 per cent year-on-year computer market growth in the first quarter of 2008.

Even desktops, which in other parts of the world aren’t doing particularly well, saw 2.5 per cent growth due to a booming corporate sector, apparently.

Optimistically, the IDC reckons Italy could see an 11.7 per cent increase in overall PC shipments in 2008.

But desktops were only the parmesan on the pasta. The meat of the market dynamics seems to be the massive growth rate for notebooks, with 35.8 per cent year-on-year growth. In Italy, this brings notebooks’ share of the big pizza to 69 per cent of all PCs, up from 58 per cent a quarter ago. Bravissimo.

Asus’s little Eee pc did its bit to help drive the notebook surge, as did HP, Dell, and Acer, with its Italian management team, with its low-cost ultraportables.

As for local vendors, Italy’s Olidata, launched its JumPC in June, apparently the first Italian-made "Netbook". Using Intel's Classmate PC, it mainly targets the little bambinis between six and 10 years old. Added into the JumPC however, is "Magic Desktop" software, a purportedly more child friendly interface, parental control functionality and USB keys with “educational computer games” on them.

Small and medium-sized businesses -SMBs, which also stands for Spicy Meat Balls - showed themselves to be keen on the ultra portables, with the share of notebooks rising in the sector to 58 per cent - up from 52 per cent in the last quarter of 2007.

As in most recent IDC reports, rising oil prices and an uncertain economy played boogeyman when it came to future predictions. But despite the IDC pointing out that these factors could lead to more cautious business spending, it also noted that declining prices and fierce vendor competition should help to keep growth going strong.

The report also noted that the Italian PC market was experiencing further market share consolidation between HP and Acer in 2008’s first quarter, and that these two giants now accounted for some 52.3 per cent of the market, up from 44.6 per cent a year ago. Seems like for Italy’s PC market, la vita è bella. µ