Shipments of PCs in the Asia Pacific region shot up by 31 percent in the third quarter of 2005, spurred by strong demand from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong.
Worldwide growth in the quarter struck a more modest 17.2 percent rate, compared to the same period last year. According to preliminary estimates from Gartner, 55 million PCs shipped in the quarter.
“Strong market growth continued to be driven by lower prices and mobility in the third quarter,” said Charles Smulders, vice president of Gartner’s computing platforms worldwide group.”These factors sped up new PC adoption and replacement activities. Overall market growth exceeded expectations, with home demand for mobile being particularly strong.”
Although Dell continued to lead the ranks of PC vendors, Gartner noted that its growth rate had slowed to equal the worldwide average, possibly reflecting Dell’s strategy of focusing on profitability rather than market share gains. Dell held 16.8 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2005, at a growth rate of 17.6 percent. Hewlett-Packard followed close behind with
15.2 percent of the market and a stronger growth rate of 18.5 percent. The biggest market share gain, and healthiest growth rate was reported by fourth-placed Acer, whose stake in the PC game rose from 3.4 to 4.4 percent between Q3 2004 and Q3 2005. The company’s growth clipped along at 54.5 percent as it overtook Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens, which moved down the ladder from fourth to fifth ranking. Lenovo was placed third in terms of market share, holding down 7.4 percent of the PC market.
Meanwhile, a new generation of handheld ultra-mobile PCs will begin flooding into the market next year, accelerating new usage models of mobile computing, delegates to Intel’s Developer Forum in Taipei were told.
Intel’s Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of the chipmaker’s mobile platforms group, showed several advance models at the gabfest, attended by some 2000 Asia-Pacific hardware and services developers. They were about the size and shape of a paperback novel held sideways: a bit too big to fit into a pocket, but easily held in one hand. The UMPCs, as the concept is known, feature 5-7in. displays and weigh around 500 grams. Some had slide-out keyboards.
Likely pricing and release dates remain unknown, but Eden forecast a big future for the concept as the world of communications goes increasingly mobile.
Intel is placing a big focus on the consumer market at the Taipei forum. The company is betting heavily on the connected digital home to boost future revenues and sees a potential market for 2 billion digital devices. It has unveiled new “Oplus” processors aimed at capturing a large share of the market for digital TV, and in 2006 will rollout system-on-chip technology, embracing Oplus, for the digital home market.
… plugs into power point
But the company is hedging its home connectivity bets. Digital Home group VP Don Macdonald revealed: as well as the WiFi and WiMax wireless connections the company has been promoting, it is now also backing powerline connections – using a home’s electricity lines to move data and images. Intel has endorsed the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which is seeking to set standards in this area. “Sometimes wireless isn’t the best solution – we need to use whatever method is best suited to the job,” said MacDonald.
HomePlug devices will connect at 200 megabits per second. High definition video will go via 480Mbps Ultra-Wideband streaming, expected next year – that will send “hours and hours” of video in just a few minutes, MacDonald claimed. MacDonald also showed some of the first home entertainment PCs to carry Intel’s “Viiv”
branding. Due to begin reaching the market from a number of manufacturers in the first quarter of 2005, they will use new Yonah and Conoe dualcore processors, and be capable of streaming high-definition video to multiple rooms.
The Viiv (rhymes with five) PCs will feature instant on- and off booting and will be able to translate multiple formats such as AVI or MPEG 4 automatically.