News Bits: PC Sales Growth for 2006, Dell #1 in Sales for Q3, Lenovo CEO Leaves, Seagate Buys Maxtor

PCSales to Grow 10% in 2006 to 229.5 Million Shipped

Growth of PC salesis shiftingtolaptops over desktops, and next year that will continue.Research company IDC predicts 10.5% morePCs will be sold next year (2006) as compared to this year. IDC estimates that a total of229.5 million PCs will be shipped next year (that's both consumer and business). By 2009 IDC predicts 300 millionPCs will be sold per year.

More: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS20032105

Dell, HP and Lenovo Top Ranks as #1in PC Sales for 3rd Quarter 2005

Dell and HP have long been at the top for shipping the most PCs, and once again for the 3rd quarter of 2005 Dell has placed first by shipping 9.5 millionPCs in the 3rd quarter (up from 8.97 million in the 2nd quarter) and HP is second having shipped 8.4 millionPCs in the 3rd quarter(up from 7.1 million in the 2nd quarter).

Lenovo is the 3rd place contender, having shipped 4.1 million PCs in the third quarter. Lenovo, a Chinese company, bought out theIBM PC division earlier this year and are gaining momentumdue tothis acquisition.

Here's the run down for the top 5 PC companies for the 3rd quarter of 2005:

1. Dell- 9.5 million PCs sold, 17.3% market share
2. HP - 8.4 million PCs sold, 15.5% market share
3. Lenovo - 4.1 million PCs sold, 7.4% market share
4. Acer -2.5 million PCs sold, 4.5% market share
5. Fujitsu-Siemens - 2.0 million PCs sold, 3.7% market share
6. Others - 28.2 million PCs sold, 51.5% market share

PCs means both laptop and desktop computers, but laptops are contributing to a lot of the extra growth in sales for each of the companies in the top 5.

More: http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20051220PR202.html

Dell Executive Takes Over Spot of Exiting Lenovo CEO

New Lenovo CEO Bill Amelio jumped from Dell

Yesterday the Lenovo CEO Stephen Wardstepped down, he was formerly in charge of the IBM PC division before they were bought out by Lenovo. Replacing Ward is a Dell executive by the name of William Amelio (seen on the Dell site here) who has been working for Dell in the Asia Pacific region for the past few years. There is no clear reason why Stephen Ward left, he helped manufacture the merger between Lenovo and IBM and it's fairly odd for him to be leaving so soon after that happened. This seems like mostly bad news for Lenovo, but they insist it's all part of just a leadership change and not a change in strategy.

more: http://news.com.com/Lenovo+says+changing+execs+is+part+of+a+plan/2100-1003_3-6004396.html?tag=nefd.top

Seagate Swallows Maxtor

Seagate today bought out the financially troubled hard drive company Maxtor. Buying out Maxtor means that Seagate will now have 40% - 45% of the hard drive market. However, companies like Dell that buy hard drives from both Seagate and Maxtor will now be forced to look for another supplier (in addition to the combined Maxtor and Seagate company), this is because it is bad for a computer manufacturer to rely on one company for supply of a component as it can cause bottlenecks in production if that company cannot keep up with supply demand.

This deal will likely not be approved until the second half of 2006 as antitrust regulators investigate the deal.

More: http://www.thestreet.com/_googlen/tech/hardware/10258630.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Convert Emails to MP3 Format For Listening to While on the Go

The company MagneticTime has announced and released their latest MT1 program that allows users to select emails that they want to have converted to MP3 format and read to them. This application is targeted at those on the go so you can listen to emails while in your car for example. Each email takes a fraction of a second to convert from text to audio and is read back with a human like voice. The MT1 program can be used on your PC, iPod, cellphone or Pocket PC. To see more about this application visit http://www.magnetictime.com/.

 

Looks like HP is catching up with Dell. I would be interested in knowing how many laptops sold for each company. I really think it is helping HP to add so many laptops with AMD processors and Dell is losing market share because they refuse to use AMD processors.

 

Oh yeah, thats definately one reason. God knows how many more computers Dell will sell if they used AMD processors as well.

 

I wonder if AMD has the manufacturing capacity to keep up with Dell's demand...I heard something about that a while back.

But, I agree wholeheartadly that HP is a major reason why AMD is doing so well. :hp:

 

I don't know if you're done your research but one of the reasons why Dell left out AMD processors is because the Intel processor (and trademarks like "Pentium") is synonymous to the PC market.

The average joe will lean towards Intel than AMD.

 

I agree that the average joe leans towards Intel and I agree that Intel has done a marvelous job of marketing there product. However, I think if the "average joe" would do their research they would find the AMD processors to be superior to Intel in most respects and less expensive as well. AMD just has not done the best job in marketing. Also, I am not suggesting that Dell eliminate Intel as an option but rather that they add AMD as an option like HP has done. HP is not exclusively Intel they just have options unlike Dell.