The Round Rock, Texas-based PC giant saw its global market share fall by a stark two percent as compared to the same quarter last year. Over the same period, Dell's Taiwanese nemesis Acer gained an astonishing four percent. HP (HPQ) logged in at 19.6 percent, a 1.5 percent increase from the same period a year ago. In other words, Dell appears to be in big trouble on its home turf.
A few other part of the report matched nicely with Intel's quarterly release yesterday. The Gartner report showed strength in Asia, just like Intel, and lessening of weakness in the U.S. EMEA showed up poorly and continued to shrink. Gartner said that shipments were due to actual sales and not inventory restocking, which is good. That means there is more organic demand driving sales. Another noticeable change was the reduction in market share of the "Others" category -- smaller PC companies. That fell from 44.7 percent to 39.9 percent, indicating that a significant market consolidation is underway.
The Gartner report is among the largest surveys and is considered relatively reliable. However, it is more of a lagging indicator. Numbers from Intel are more of a leading indicator as they represent PC anc computing components versus shipments of actual PCs. Gartner had predicted a much more serious 12 percent decline in PC shipments for the quarter and the improved number gives more credence to the building belief that tech is rebounding nicely.
