Worldwide PC Shipments Slide 8.1%

By Doug Olenick -- TWICE, 6/19/2009 1:02:00 PM

El Segundo, Calif. — PC shipments fell more than 8 percent during the first quarter, dragged down by weaker-than-expected desktop sales, according to iSuppli.

During the first quarter, worldwide shipments sank almost 6 million units, to 66.4 million. Sequential quarter shipments fell 14 percent, compared with the fourth quarter of 2008.

iSuppli had predicted a 4 percent drop in shipments and blamed the worldwide credit crisis for the worse-than-expected performance.

Desktop PC shipments fell 23 percent during the first quarter, but notebooks — buoyed by netbook sales — managed a very healthy 10 percent increase.

“The bundling of a low-cost portable computer and an Internet-access package clearly has struck a chord with consumers,” said Matthew Wilkins, computer platforms research principal analyst at iSuppli. “The reduced upfront pricing of such packages provided by monthly contract plans also has been a strong factor propelling their success.” iSuppli predicted netbooks will account for 14 percent of worldwide notebook PC shipments in 2009, up from 9 percent last year.

Hewlett-Packard remained the top worldwide computer shipper, managing to generate a small 0.4 percent increase on 13.06 million units shipped. Second-place Dell saw its shipments fall a dramatic 18.7 percent.

Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba rounded out the top five vendors during the first quarter.