The laptop boom in real numbers

Table: Digitimes

In a recent column, I passed on some Gartner and IDC numbers on the growth of the worldwide PC market in 2007. Hewlett-Packard came out top, and I commented that "HP boss Mark Hurd has turned out to be a star, increasing worldwide sales by 30% to 50.5m units, on IDC's numbers. In 2006, HP was level with Dell; last year, it was ahead by 10m units."

I had the total numbers, which bundle together all types of personal computer except handhelds. Digitimes in Taiwan has used IDC's numbers to construct a different chart that only covers notebook computer sales in various markets: the snapshot above shows half the table.

It shows that notebooks now account for almost half HP's annual PC sales, and that it grew shipments by an amazing 58.1%. However, it still didn't manage to grow as fast as Acer, which increased shipments by 60.6% from a lower base.

HP also did well in the US market, with unit shipments up by 41% to 7.7m units, which is fractionally more than the market leader, Dell.

However, as I pointed out: "The US market is in relative decline. It's becoming more important to be strong in Asia." And on the Digitimes chart, HP increased its shipments of laptops in the region (Asia Pacific w/o Japan) by 98.2% to more than 4 million.

OK, it's not a big number now. But if sales double every year, it soon becomes a very big number indeed.