Despite a slowdown in corporate spending in the second half of the year due to the Y2K lockdown, the Australian PC market still managed to grow 17.1 per cent on the previous year. This was the summary of IDC Australia analyst Logan Ringland in its review of the Australian PC market for 1999.
According to IDC, the top five
vendors held 44 per cent of the total market, with Compaq maintaining ascendancy with 14.2 per cent market share followed by IBM at 10.6 per cent.
Ringland said that corporate Australia adopted a cautious stance in the second half of 1999, but the commercial desktop segment still recorded growth because of big business's strong first half topping up exercise in readiness for Y2K. "Nevertheless, the growth [at 15.2 per cent year-on-year] was below the overall market's," he said.
But looking at the consumer desktop segment, Ringland reported that the mums and dads of this world, along with small and home businesses weren't nearly as spooked by Y2K and continued spending strongly throughout the year. The result was a 19.2 per cent growth year-on-year. The top five in this segment were:l HP (up from third last year) l IBM l Compaq l NEC Packard Bell l Apple.
The jump for Hewlett-Packard from third to first in the consumer desktop segment was cause for celebration for the local subsidiary.
While he refused to disclose how much of HP's PC business is represented by this segment, HP's market development manager of home personal computers, Jamieson Yu, claimed that its focus on the Pavilion range generated some impressive results.
These included a whopping 104 per cent increase in consumer desktop sales over the previous year and contributed to the vendor's 37 per cent jump in PC business over all.
Ringland said that the consumer desktop segment was driven by a number of key factors.
These include the continued growth of the Internet, as well as some smart marketing on the part of the International vendors.