Worldwide PC shipments rose 1.9% to 89.0 million units in the first quarter of 2012 from 87.3 million units in the first quarter of 2011, according to preliminary results released by market research firm Gartner, Inc. on Wednesday.
Gartner had earlier projected first quarter 2012 worldwide PC shipments to decline 1.2% from a year earlier.
"The results were mixed depending on the region, as we saw the EMEA region perform better than expected with PC shipments growing 6.7 percent in the first quarter of 2012, while Asia/Pacific performed below expectations, in part because of slow growth in India and China," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
"While the PC industry has high expectations for strong growth in the emerging markets, the slowdown of these countries in this quarter provides a cautionary notice to vendors that the future growth for the PC industry cannot heavily depend on the emerging markets even though PC penetration in these regions is low," Kitagawa added.
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) continued to be the world's largest PC vendor, with a 17.2% market share, followed by China's Lenovo Group Ltd. with 13.1%, Dell Inc. (DELL) with 11.0% and Taiwan's Acer Inc. with a 10.9% market share, according to Gartner.
Lenovo experienced the strongest growth among the top five vendors, as its shipments increased 28.1 percent in the first quarter of 2012.
In the U.S., PC shipments fell 3.5% to 15.5 million units in the first quarter of 2012 from 16.1 million units in the first quarter of 2011. HP was the top PC vendor in the U.S. with a 29.0% market share, followed by Dell with 22.3% and Apple, Inc. (AAPL) with 10.6% market share.
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