Industry news

PC market growth continues, says IDC

New figures from IDC show international shipments of personal computers continue to grow.

Sales in the second quarter of 2008 have also exceeded predictions, with an increase of 15.3 per cent on the same time last year. First quarter growth of 14.9 per cent was recorded.

The boom has been attributed to solid growth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region which has balanced out slower sales increases in the Asia/Pacific region excluding Japan.

"Despite the economic headwinds, the PC market continued to show its resilience. Product refreshes, vendor competition for channels, and aggressive pricing add to the ongoing trend toward portable computing in attracting buyers," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Tracker.

However, the market is not "immune" to the global credit crunch, he added.

Slow growth was already seen in the USA and Japan for the period.

In other computer technology news, IDC's recent study of PC storage found users are adopting hybrid and solid state drivers as well as sustaining the traditional disk drive market.