IDC: UK PC market grows by 26.4%

The stats

• Total Q2 UK market (desktop and notebook) = 2.73M units, +26.4% growth YOY
• Desktop = 0.97M units, -8% decline YOY

• • Commercial = 655K, -5.8%,
  • Consumer = 318K, -12.2%

• Notebook = 1.76M units, 59.5% growth YOY

• • Commercial = 840K, 38.3%
  • Consumer = 915K, 85.5%

We asked how significant the Asus Eee PC has been in this growth. “At least 60K of the notebook figure is from the Eee PC alone, which includes some Eee PC 900 sales,” said Morvay.

Apparently, the UK market is pretty much the most price sensitive in Europe, which means we value low price over performance considerations. “OEMs are bringing out special SKUs for the UK market because people don’t want to pay for better specs,” said Morvay.

Here we have the secret of all this growth of course: low prices. Morvay wasn’t able to give us figures for the growth in sales value of the UK market but we’d be surprised if the numbers weren’t a lot lower.

But still, it’s encouraging to see that the UK PC market is experiencing such growth in the middle of a supposed slowdown. It looks like the main consequence of the credit crunch, and all that, has been to make people even more price sensitive than ever.