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PC sales booming around the globe

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CIOL Bureau
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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%.

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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.

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