Gartner reports that European PC sales rose

THE SECOND HALF OF 2010, rather like the second half of many a football game, could see everything in play in PC sales, the market research company Gartner said following earlier warnings from Digitimes.

According to Gartner PC shipments in Western Europe totaled 15.6 million units in the second quarter, a 19.6 per cent increase on the same period last year. But the figures come with a warning. Ranjit Atwal, Gartner research director said, "The PC market has so far defied the general economic downturn, but the real test will be in the second half of 2010, since we saw a stronger second half in 2009."

And the UK has shown itself to be the sick man of Europe with it being the weakest of the larger PC markets on the continent's western half. France's PC market grew at almost double the UK's rate. "Given the UK market was also the weakest in the downturn, its recovery had been much more muted," said Atwal. In a piece of astonishing insight he blamed the recession for the relatively poor performance of the UK PC market.

Atwal went on to blame austerity measures. "There is no doubt that the introduction of austerity measures in the UK has hindered any anticipated improvement in the underlying demand for PCs. We don't expect this to change for the rest of 2010," he said.

In May Digitimes reported that the big PC manufacturers were cutting back on their parts orders in preparation for a weaker second half. One theory was that the number of notebook orders is falling. Asustek lowered its targets for shipments of motherboards and notebooks for the third quarter of 2010. µ