PC sales booming around the globe

BANGALORE, September 10: PC sales around the world are expected to show
no less than 25 percent growth in the third quarter in terms of the number
of computers shipped, said market researchers at International Data Corp.
Earlier, IDC had forecasted 19% of growth for the July-September quarter.
Compared to the second quarter, sales are up 7.2%.

Driving the strong sales is a widespread boom in consumer demand for
inexpensive PCs as well as recovering economies in Asia and the continued
strength of the U.S. economy, now in its 8th year of economic expansion.
On the revenue side, things are still not as rosy. Industry sales are
projected to grow only 5% in the third quarter due to the sharp decline in
PC prices experienced in the past year.

For the fourth quarter, analysts are projecting a good, but not an
exception quarter. Some last minute "panic buying" by companies
replacing older PCs to avoid being affected by the Y2K problem may end up
boosting PC sales beyond projections. At today's PC prices, it is often
less expensive to buy new computers than to try to analyze and fix Y2K
problems in existing hardware.

U.S. shipments in the third quarter will increase 28 percent compared
with the year-earlier period, while in Western Europe, third-quarter
year-to-year unit growth is pegged at 16.3 percent. In the Asia/Pacific
region, excluding Japan, shipments are expected to grow at a 34.3 percent
rate. Shipments in Japan will show a third-quarter growth rate of 32
percent.