Posted 10/15/09 at 05:10:17 PM by Bart Salisbury

Gartner, Inc’s gloomy forecast of a 5.6% decline in PC sales for the third quarter of 2009 didn’t quite pan out. Instead, Gartner is reporting a modest 0.5% increase, with 80.9 million units shipped worldwide. Sales were driven by the consumer market, with its insatiable demand for low-priced mobile PCs (i.e., netbooks).

Global leaders were Hewlett-Packard, with a 19.9% share, followed by Acer (15.4%) and Dell (12.8%). Dell was, however, tops in the U.S., with a 26.2% share of the market, followed closely by Hewlett-Packard with 25.7%. Acer finished out the top three with a 13.9% share.

Gartner predicts that the introduction of Windows 7 will have little impact on PC sales for the 4th quarter. According to Gartner’s Mikako Kitagawa:  “Recent OS releases have not been a growth driver in the PC market.” But, Windows 7 could be a catalyst for an overdue hardware replacement cycle. Ms. Kitagawa expects some interest in hardware upgrades from consumers and business through the holiday season, and an impact in 2010 as the corporate market begins to react to the release of Windows 7.

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Posted 10/06/09 at 08:36:48 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Acer owes its rapid strides in the PC market to its success in the netbook segment. Now it expects to benefit from the launch of Windows 7 and a resurgent global economy. Acer chairman JT Wang is confident that the company will meet its revenue forecast for Q4 2009. The company is expected to register a 10% growth in consolidated revenues during the ongoing quarter.

Wang told investors that his company plans to cash in on the upcoming launch of Windows 7 with new PCs based on the OS - all priced between US$499 and US$599.  While big and small companies of all ilks are queuing up to enter the e-reader fray, chairman Wang is in no hurry. But that might change once the e-reader market grows beyond 50 million units.

He believes that the entry of Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba into the ultra-thin notebook segment is bereft of seriousness, and this very lack of sincerity is preventing Intel’s ultra-thin notebook technology from taking off.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 07:40:52 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Although, earlier this year, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology mandated that the vaguely named “Green Dam Youth Escort” web filtering software be bundled with all new PCs, including the imported ones, it later postponed the July 1 deadline before eventually scrapping its edict last month.

Now all remaining major PC manufacturers have stopped bundling the software with their PCs, with the announcement that Sony, Lenovo and Acer will no longer be bundling the controversial software.

However, it is still mandatory for those administrating public use computers to have Green Dam Youth Escort installed on such machines. But one unnamed Chinese high school is said to have flouted the government’s order by deleting the software from its computers. It is not often that China offers obeisance to outside pressure.

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Posted 07/09/09 at 09:01:55 AM by Paul Lilly

It looks like Intel's Atom platform and the whole netbook craze can only do so much to stave off slumping sales. According to market analysts Gartner Group, worldwide spending on IT is expected to drop 6 percent from 2008 to $3.2 trillion in 2009. While $3.2 trillion might not sound like much to sneeze at, the 6 percent slide is almost twice as much as Gartner predicted during the first quarter.

The biggest casualty in IT spending comes to computing hardware, which is expected to drop by 16 percent. IT services and telecom spending are on track for 5.6 percent and 4.6 percent drops, while Gartner predicts software spending growth to slow by 1.6 percent.

According to Gartner, lingering global IT budget cuts and the rising U.S. dollar are both to blame.

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Posted 07/12/07 at 01:21:08 PM by Robert Strohmeyer

Dell isn't the only company offering good machines for Linux. Here are five other choices that you may not know about.

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