Trying to follow the ups and downs of the DRAM market is a crap-shoot at best, but market research firm iSuppli is doing its best and now believes we're in for a shortage.

There are two reasons for this. First, iSuppli says bottlenecks in the availability of tooling equipment are cause for concern, and secondly, challenges relating to immersion yield could throw a wrench into the whole operation.

On that second point, iSuppli says resource constrained companies could have trouble funding the transition to beyond 50nm and end up reducing their total output. Elpida, for example, is in the midst of moving from 6xnm to 45nm, but if the company should run into any unexpected yield issues along the way, bit production could be significantly disrupted, iSuppli said.

Or this could all be much ado about nothing. Stay tuned.

Steve Jobs can say what he wants about tablets replacing PCs in the same manner that urban automobiles have replaced farm trucks in the past few decades (his comparison, not ours), the fact of the matter is the PC market is doing just fine, according to market research firm iSuppli. More than just fine, first quarter PC shipments skyrocketed by nearly 23 percent over the same period from last year, representing the highest annual surge iSuppli has ever recorded since it began keeping tabs on the market in 2003.

"Early 2009 represented one of the weakest periods in the history of the PC market, as consumer and corporate demand plunged due to the economic downturn," Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms at iSuppli, said in a statement. "With economic conditions improving, PC sales rebounded in early 2010."

PC makers shipped some 81.5 million units during the first quarter, driven in large part by high demand in Asian markets, iSuppli said. During the same period in 2009, shipments sank to just 66.5 million units.

While Hewlett Packard (HP) remains the market leader with a 19.6 percent share, Asus by far benefited the most from the increased demand, noting a whopping 136.2 percent year-over-year growth rate. The next closest was Lenovo, which noted a 58.5 percent growth rate, followed by Acer with 47.1 percent.