Increased competition from local and multinational vendors caused Compaq Computer's PC shipments to drop 12 percent in Latin America in 2001, according to Gartner's Dataquest unit. Compaq's drop compares with an overall 7.6 percent growth in shipments for the Latin American PC market in 2001, Dataquest announced Monday.
Still, Compaq retained the top spot in PC shipments in the region, with a 17.3 percent market share. That market share figure is down from 21.1 percent in 2000. IBM Corp. came in a distant second with a shipment market share of 5.7 percent, while Hewlett-Packard Co. nabbed 5.4 percent of all shipments.
Dell Computer Corp. came in fourth with 4.2 percent of all shipments, but posted the highest shipment growth -- 36.6 percent -- in 2001 compared with 2000. Mexican PC vendor Alaska, which is owned by Mexican distributor Mexmal Mayorista SA de CV, finished fifth with a market share of 3.2 percent.
In terms of revenue, however, Latin America's PC market shrank 3.2 percent to US$7.35 billion in 2001 compared with 2000, according to Dataquest.
Out of the 7.4 million PCs shipped in 2001, 503,249 were notebooks, a decline of 1.7 percent over 2000.
Brazil, the largest PC market in Latin America, was led in shipments by two local vendors in the fourth quarter: Metron L. Indústria Eletrônica Ltd. finished first, followed by Itautec Philco SA. Brazil's shipments grew 18 percent to almost 3.3 million units in 2001. México, the second largest PC market in Latin America, closed the year with a 2 percent increase in shipments to 1.85 million, according to Dataquest.