Gartner: U.S. PC Shipments Up 8.3% In 2004

In the report, released Tuesday, U.S. PC shipments hit 62.3 million units, up 8.3 percent compared to the 57.5 million sold in 2003. Gartner officials said that strong notebook PC sales more than made up for a weak desktop PC market in the U.S.

There were no changes in the top five vendors, according to Gartner.

Dell led the pack by selling 18.9 million units, or 30.3 percent of the overall market, up from 15.9 million units, or a share of 27.7 percent in 2003.

Hewlett-Packard kept the No. 2 spot with 11.5 million units to account for 18.4 percent of the market.

Gateway, at No. 3, was the only one of the top five vendors to see its sales fall from 2003 to 2004, with sales last year of 3.6 million units in the U.S. It was followed by IBM, with 2.9 million units, and Apple, with 2 million units.

Worldwide, Dell was the leading vendor as well, with 31 million units shipped last year, up 23.1 percent from 2003. HP shipped 27.6 million units, up 12 percent from the year before. IBM was third with 10.4 million units, but will be replaced by Lenovo in 2005 thanks to the recent deal for Big Blue to sell its PC division to Lenovo. Fujitsu and Acer rounded out the top five. Acer showed the strongest jump in shipments with a 29.6 percent growth from 2003 to 2004.