Robust growth in Aussie PC market

Australian PC sales were strong in calendar 2003 with the market growing 16.1 percent compared to 2002, according to data released by market researcher Gartner.

Andy Woo, an analyst for Gartner's hardware and systems group, said the PC market ended on a high last year driven by consistent replacement rates amongst enterprises and the uptake of mobile PCs. 'The growth rate is even more impressive given the maturity of the Australian market and all the externalities that have happened in 2003 such as SARS and the unrest in the middle east,' he said.

Woo said Australia had enjoyed two strong years of double digit growth but the question was whether the market could maintain momentum moving into 2004. 'Gartner believes replacement rates will start to slide off in the enterprise space and interest rate rise will cause some slow down in the consumer space eventually. Bottom line is 2004 is shaping to be a challenging year for the PC market,' he said.

The mobile PC market grew 35.2 percent last year compared to 2002, Gartner said.

By vendor, HP took the number one spot with 16.6 percent of the market, down from 16.9 in 2002 while Dell captured 10.2 percent of the market, up from 9.6 percent in 2002. IBM came third with 7 percent, up from 6.5 percent in 2002.

Across the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan), 29.7 million units were shipped in 2003, a 9.5 percent increase on 2002. Desktop PCs accounted for 82 percent of shipments. In South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, growth of mobile PCs continued to be strong whereas desk-based PCs have suffered negative growths, Gartner said.