Worldwide PC shipments grew by 8.7% in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. While Europe, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan), Canada, and Latin America continued to grow at a healthy clip, shipments in the United States and Japan continued to decline.

Slowing commercial sales constrained the growth of some market leaders and had a significant impact on the U.S. and Japanese markets. Despite these pockets of slow growth, the retail and consumer markets remained relatively strong – even in more mature regions.

Worldwide PC shipment growth of 8.7% brought quarterly shipments to 65.6 million for the quarter. This was down from 9.1% growth in the third quarter and 1.4% below a forecast of 10.1% growth for the fourth quarter. For all of 2006, PC shipments reached 228.6 million with growth of 10.0% compared to growth of 16% in 2005 and a forecast of 10.4% for 2006.

"This was a busy quarter, with the release of Vista for commercial users and the pending release for consumers on top of the ongoing transition to Portables and a generally slowing market," said Loren Loverde, director of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. "Add to that the changing pricing environment and segment dynamics and it was a very challenging quarter. HP clearly was able to capitalize on the situation, solidifying its lead in worldwide quarterly shipments with a 3.4% share advantage over Dell, but it also reflects underlying pricing and segment trends that were tough on competitors such as Dell, Lenovo, Gateway, and Fujitsu-Siemens."

As Dell updates its strategy, it saw fourth quarter shipments fall year on year and sequentially in the United States and worldwide. Nevertheless, the company maintained its number one position in worldwide shipments for all of 2006, though by a narrow margin. Meanwhile, companies such as HP, Acer, Toshiba, and Apple benefited from a combination of strong retail and consumer sales, portable PC adoption (notably in the consumer segment), and aggressive pricing. From this perspective, it does not appear that the January release of Vista's consumer version had a big impact on fourth quarter shipments, but it remains to be seen if the consumer drivers will remain strong in the first half of 2007.

"The U.S. market displayed an unseasonably weak performance, largely attributed to poor commercial demand, affecting vendors such as Dell and Lenovo," said David Daoud, manager of Personal Computing and PC Tracker Programs at IDC "However, the consumer notebook market was solid, essentially benefiting vendors active in the retail sector. The channels were also relatively healthy, taking advantage of low component prices and healthy demand in the SMB segment."