HP Overtakes Dell for Shipping Most PCs Worldwide for Q4 2006, Apple Grows Fastest in U.S.

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Worldwide PC shipments* grew by 8.7% in the fourth quarter of 2006 compared to the fourth quarter of 2005, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. The big news is that HP stole the show for most PCs shipped in the world over the past three months, knocking Dell off of the top marketshare thrown.

* PC Shipments include both notebook, desktop and x86 server sales.

Dell actually performed worse than Q4 2005 by shipping 9,666,000 PCs in Q4 2006 compared to 10,552,000 PCs in Q4 2005 -- that's an 8.4% drop in volume sales. HP meanwhile grew sales by 23.8%. First place HP shipped 11,900,000 PCs between October and December of 2006.

Volume sales in Europe, Asia/Pacific, Canada and Latin America grew at a good clip, but sales in the U.S. and Japan did not see huge growth gains. Overall, PC shipment growth was up 8.7% in Q4 2006 compared to Q4 2005. Analysts had predicted 10.1% growth, so sales were lower than expected. 65.6 million PCs were shipped overall in Q4 2006.

Companies such as HP, Acer, Toshiba and Apple that saw good growth in Q42006 focused on notebook sales to achieve this growth. Toshiba has almost completely ditched selling desktops and Apple is spending more money marketing notebooks.

HP lead the pack for worldwide sales in Q4 2006:

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide PC Shipments, Fourth Quarter 2006 (Units Shipments are in thousands)
Rank	Vendor	Q4 2006 Shipments	Q4 2006 Market Share	Q4 2005 Shipments	Q4 2006 Market Share	4Q06/4Q05Growth
1	HP	11,900	18.1%	9,613	15.9%	23.8%
2	Dell	9,666	14.7%	10,552	17.5%	- 8.4%
3	Lenovo	4,772	7.3%	4,398	7.3%	8.5%
4	Acer	4,630	7.1%	3,360	5.6%	37.8%
5	Toshiba	2,439	3.7%	2,081	3.5%	17.2%
	Others	32,180	49.1%	30,313	50.3%	6.2%
	All Vendors	65,587	100.0%	60,318	100.0%	8.7%

 

Dell lead in U.S. PC sales volume for Q4 2006, but fell 16.7% from last year while HP gained 15.9%. Apple grew the fastest in the U.S. and moved to #4 computer maker in the U.S. in terms of volume of computers shipped:

Top 5 Vendors, U.S. PC Shipments, Fourth Quarter 2006 (Units Shipments are in thousands)
Rank	Vendor	Q4 2006 Shipments	Market Share	Q4 2005 Shipments	Market Share	4Q06/4Q05 Growth
1	Dell	4,783	27.9%	5,741	33.3%	-16.7%
2	HP	4,115	24.0%	3,549	20.6%	15.9%
3	Gateway	1,138	6.6%	1,145	6.6%	- 0.7%
4	Apple	808	4.7%	614	3.6%	31.8%
5	Toshiba	804	4.7%	703	4.1%	14.4%
	Others	5,502	32.1%	5,487	31.8%	0.3%
	All Vendors	17,150	100.0%	17,240	100.0%	-0.5%

 

Regional Outlook for Q4 2006

• USA - consumer demand was quite weak and commercial demand slowed considerably in the U.S. HP had a huge quarter though, growing shipments nearly 16% compared to last year. Dell continues to lose ground to HP.
  
• EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) - sales in this region continued to grow at a healthy clip, continued notebook adoption, and healthy consumer growth. Slowing commercial demand had a negative impact on growth for Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, and Lenovo. Meanwhile, HP and Acer leveraged grew stronger in this region.
  
• Japan - PC shipments receded by more than 10% year on year as the pending release of Vista and competition from flat panel LCD TVs cut into consumer demand.
  
• Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) - maintained steady growth as expected, although Taiwan came in short of forecasts in part due to a delayed government tender.

Vendor Highlights

• HP - keeps on rolling with its momentum, 2006 PC sales ended up being 24% more than 2005 (the fastest growth for HP since 2000) and took a clear lead in worldwide shipment volume for the quarter.
  
• Dell - was unable to recover from a slow third quarter 2006 and stumbled through the end of the year. Shipments to the U.S. market, which continue to represent over 50% of Dell volume, were down nearly 17% year on year following a single-digit decline in Q3. Dell is focusing on profitability over market share and as HP, Acer and Apple push ahead to take market share Dell is suffering.
  
• Lenovo - continues to do well in Asia/Pacific, but is struggling just about everywhere else. PC shipments to Asian countries represents nearly 60% of volume for Lenovo, meanwhile shipments declined in the United States and Japan as Lenovo struggled with its supply chain and shipping products on time.
  
• Acer - had solid quarter Q4 with growth in all regions. EMEA represents roughly 70% of Acer's worldwide shipments, and grew by nearly 37% in the fourth quarter, but expansion in the United States and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) also contributed to the company's gains.
  
• Toshiba - is focusing on notebooks and shunning desktops, this strategy continues to give the company an edge in overall growth. Worldwide shipments were up more than 17% in the fourth quarter, with an increase of more than 14% in the United States
  
• Gateway - sales were essentially flat for Gateway in the U.S. with no growth over last years numbers for the quarter.
  
• Apple - had another quarter of very solid growth as the company combined new portable products with strong retail sales and positive press following a successful transition to Intel processors. Worldwide and U.S. shipments were each up roughly 30% year on year.

 

Gateway seem to be going nowhere in terms of growth. They probably need a refresh/increase quality control to get people more interested in their systems.

 

I'd be quite happy to get an Mac as a second lappie just for office and media use. Expensive for such small purposes but my student loan says I can do that I'm mostly interested in the optical out standard on Macs. Come on Windows based manufacturers!

 

dell and gateway's approach of putting good parts into what I have seen from the forums to be 'cheaper laptops' in comparison to HP and lenovo better built / lesser performance equivalents has proved bad =/. Looks like people want the best quality and not the best performance, it will be interesting to see how each company responds. And it seems like ASUS (although there not up there) gives people both at a high price ;0

 

It looks to me like Dell's service and support, build quality, and sales system is really starting to bite them. That's what I think. I don't think the components are marginally better than anyone else's, and my experience at least confirms that. It's just cumbersome to get a good deal from them, their systems really feel cheap, and the support is pretty lousy. Again, that's just from what I've experienced.

Nice job HP. Just wish they'd offer more high-end gaming notebooks with the latest and greatest. They are really making strides for combining just enough style with just enough performance.

Toshiba and Gateway...well, I'm not surprised. I really don't hear much about them. They don't advertise much these days.

Apple...dunno what to say.

 

Doesn't surprise me in the least that Dell is finally feeling the bite of their cheap systems, craptastic support, and everything else that they've skimped on for the past several years.

Nice job HP. Just wish they'd offer more high-end gaming notebooks with the latest and greatest. They are really making strides for combining just enough style with just enough performance.

I have a feeling that they will be planning that.

I don't have any evidence to back it up, however, with the purchase of Voodoo, they now have ties to get better video cards, and they'd be insane not to interject both their desktops and notebooks into the gaming sector.

 

I honestly have no clue what they saw in buying voodoo. nothing has changed and its still ridiculously overpriced.

 

Voodoo as a separate company offers some nice, super-powerful but extremely expensive notebooks: http://www.voodoopc.com/default.aspx . Boutique notebooks?

 

Man, HP just keeps on steamrolling! My first Dell notebook back in '99 (Inspiron 3500) was built very well, especially in comparison to the e1705 I recently owned.

 

I agree about the declining quality of Dell. Lets write Michael Dell a letter of complaint!

 

I'm waiting until the new Vista-models (for HP) will be out until I declare that 'nothing has changed.'



I agree about the declining quality of Dell. Lets write Michael Dell a letter of complaint!

If he doesn't jump out of a building first.

=P

 

Dell is a prime example of what happens when you take shortcuts. Sure it pleases your shareholders and people marvel at the cheap prices and flock - in the short run - but it is lethal to the long term prospects of your business. It's all about product. HP starts to build some good products, their share goes up, it's not rocket science. A bad reputation from burned buyers takes a long time to shake (ask American car makers). In 1999 I would recommend Dell to anyone, now not at all. Any friend who is determined to get a Dell I tell them to bite the bullet and get the Accident Protection warranty, so at least when the POS craps out on them they get a new machine.

The lack of a WSXGA or WUXGA screen on the 15" model is ALL that stands between me and a HP 6000t. Hopefully when Vista and the ginormous sidebar foolishness comes out HP will realize we need higher res

 

esactly ..that and the 'n' thing and gpu.

 

What 'n' thing do you refer to? Is that a problem with the keyboard or something?