Western European PC market grows by 23 per cent

PC sales in Western Europe increased by 22.9 per cent over the previous year, with 13.8 million units being shipped, reports Gartner.

This is the highest level of growth since 1999 with sales in all the major countries of the region seeing sales boosted by at least 20 per cent.

The strongest growth was in the UK, where second quarter shipments totalled 2.8 million units – a year on year increase of 27.4 per cent.

As previously reported, the market has been driven by sales of mobile PCs, which accounted for 64 per cent of the total PC shipments – a 60 per cent increase in volume during Q2. However, this continues to be at the expense of the desktop market, which showed a year on year decline of eight per cent.

Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst at Gartner said: “The PC market in the UK again performed above expectations as the consumer market continued to boom. The introduction of the mini-notebook PC has created some excitement, and we expect sales in this segment will help the market sustain growth for the rest of the year.”

Link: Gartner