2003 Was A Good Year For U.S. PC Sales2003 Was A Good Year For U.S. PC Sales

The U.S. PC market staged a recovery in 2003, with total shipments up nearly 11% over 2002, according to the latest edition of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.

IDC estimates that total shipments for last year in the United States were more than 52.7 million units, up 10.8% from the 47.6 million units shipped in 2002. IDC defines the PC market to include desktop PCs, notebook PCs, and x86-based servers, but does not include handhelds.

Dell solidified its lead in the U.S. market by shipping 16.3 million units, or 30.9% of the entire market, according to IDC. That's up from 13.3 million units in 2002. No. 2 Hewlett-Packard also saw sales increases, but less dramatically, hitting 10.9 million units in 2003 compared with 9.3 million units in 2002.

Rounding out the top five U.S. vendors in 2003 were IBM, with 2.7 million units; Gateway, 2.0 million; and Apple, 1.7 million, IDC said.

Fourth-quarter sales provided a major boost for the entire year. IDC estimates that vendors shipped 14.5 million units into the United States in the fourth quarter, up more than 15% from the 12.7 million units shipped in the same period last year. Dell took first place in the quarter with 4.4 million units, followed by HP, IBM, eMachines, and Gateway.

Worldwide, HP regained the lead over Dell in the fourth quarter, shipping 7.5 million units compared with its rival's total of 7.2 million, according to IDC. They were followed by IBM, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens, and Toshiba to round out the top five.

HP's resurgence in the fourth quarter was not quite enough to give it bragging rights as the worldwide PC sales champ. Dell sold the most PCs in 2003, with shipments totaling 25.8 million units compared with HP's 25 million.

Worldwide, businesses and consumers bought 152.6 million PCs in 2003, up 11.4% from 136.9 million in 2002, IDC said.