EMEA PC market grows 22% in Q1

Looking up

The EMEA region has been the slowest to emerge from the global recession but there are signs, for the PC market at least, that it's beginning to catch up.

The latest preliminary figures from market researcher IDC reveal year-on-year growth of 22 percent for the whole PC market across EMEA. Once more it was mobile, as opposed to desktop, PCs that fuelled the growth - registering 32.2 percent growth, but desktops seem be showing some signs of life.

"The consumer market remained buoyant in the first quarter, and while mini-notebook sales stayed stable, most of the growth this quarter came from mainstream notebooks," said Eszter Morvay, research manager at IDC EMEA personal computing. "Mainstream notebook demand was forecast to regain momentum, but the market was boosted even further by strong vendor and channel push around Intel's new Core i platform.

"This has led to a refresh of all major vendors' product offering, whose launch was coupled with major promotional campaigns, which supported increasing noise around computing overall. In addition, all-in-ones, which experienced the first strong market uptake last quarter, also continued to gain traction, stimulating positive consumer desktop market growth to levels last recorded four years ago."

Within EMEA, Western Europe grew at a relatively slow 14.5 percent (remember how bad things were a year ago). The UK managed nice year-on-year growth of 26.2 percent in the consumer segment, but commercial sales once more contracted, this time by 3.9 percent.

Here's how the top five vendors did - with ASUS having a stormer.

Source: IDC EMEA Quarterly PC Tracker, Preliminary Results, 1Q10, April 19, 2010