As expected, Dell has got back into the top spot as the world's biggest PC manufacturer, after being briefly displaced by the merged HPaq (Hewlet-Packard and Compaq). On Gartner Dataquest numbers for the latest quarter, Dell took 16.9% of the world market, an increas of 24.4% compared with the same quarter last year. Worldwide PC shipments grew by 5.5% to 34.5 million units (including about 0.7 million Macs), though rival research group IDC reckoned growth was only 2.1%. The world's Top 5 is now: Dell, HP/Compaq, IBM, Toshiba and NEC. "Dell accounted for 30.7% of the PCs shipped in the United States, an increase of 23.9% from [the same quarter] a year ago, according to Gartner."
Comment: Interesting to see that there are now two Japanese suppliers in the Top 5. Their progress has been helped by the decline of once-popular US brands such as Apple, Gateway and Packard Bell, which is now owned by NEC, and by the shift from desktops to notebook PCs, which favours Toshiba, NEC, Fujitsu and Sony. Although the American IBM Thinkpad is the number one notebook PC brand, at least in terms of prestige, IBM only got into that position by doing development in Japan and by combining with local suppliers, eg with Toshiba for LCD screen development and manufacturing.
