"These are good results especially given that PC shipments for the third quarter of 2009 are being compared to a very strong third quarter from 2008," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "Sequentially, third quarter shipments grew 18 percent, which is higher than the historical seasonal growth from the second to third quarter."

"The consumer market continued to lead unit shipment growth, driven by low priced mobile PCs," Ms. Kitagawa said. "Ongoing price declines continue to be a major issue in the PC industry. PC vendor performance cannot be determined solely by unit market share gains alone as related revenues and margin performance are key to surviving in very competitive market."

Hewlett-Packard continued to lead the worldwide PC market as its shipment growth exceeded the worldwide average (see Table 1). HP did well in Asia/Pacific, particularly in China. In the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, HP's shipments declined, but it was less of a drop compared to the EMEA average.

 Table 1 Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q09 (Thousands of Units)                            
 Company           3Q09 Shipments   3Q09 Market Share (%)   3Q08 Shipments   3Q08 Market Share (%)   3Q09-3Q08 Growth (%) 
 Hewlett-Packard   16,120           19.9                    14,785           18.4                    9.0                  
 Acer              12,484           15.4                    10,098           12.5                    23.6                 
 Dell Inc.         10,343           12.8                    11,089           13.8                    -6.7                 
 Lenovo            6,878            8.5                     5,941            7.4                     15.8                 
 Toshiba           4,036            5.0                     3,643            4.5                     10.8                 
 Others            31,003           38.3                    34,914           43.4                    -11.2                
 Total             80,864           100.0                   80,470           100.0                   0.5                  
 Note: Data includes desk-based PCs, mobile PCs and X86 servers. Source: Gartner (October 2009)                           


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Gartner analysts said the launch of Microsoft's latest operating system (OS), Windows 7, should have a minimal impact on PC unit growth.