PC shipments were up 22 per cent

MORE THAN 90 MILLION PCs were shipped in the last quarter of 2009 which is 22.1 per cent more than in the fourth quarter of last year.

According to a report from Gartner last quarter had the strongest growth rate the worldwide PC market has experienced in the last seven years.

These numbers are compared to a very weak quarter a year ago due to the economic downturn.

Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said that the preliminary results indicate the recovery of the PC market globally.

US and Asia/Pacific sectors had already shown positive indicators last quarter, however the fourth quarter 2009 results were more concrete evidence of the recovery.

Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions entered the economic downturn later than the US and Asia/Pacific, so it has been slower to recover.

Latin America and Japan also recorded shipment increases.

She said that shipment growth was largely driven by low-priced consumer mobile PCs, both in regular notebooks and mini-notebooks, by which we think she meant netbooks.

Buyers became extremely price sensitive. Low-priced PCs were good enough for many average consumers.

Kitagawa added that Windows 7's launch did not create additional PC demand, though it was a good marketing tool during holiday sales.

HP maintained its top position in worldwide PC shipments, followed by Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba in that order. µ