Both Gartner and IDC said that the global PC market showed strong growth in the second quarter of this year, with Gartner estimating the pace at 20.7% and IDC at 22.4%. Gartner said 82.9 million PCs were sold, while IDC put the number at 81.5 million.

[Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ)] kept its number one spot with a market share of 18.1% (IDC) or 17.4% (Gartner). IDC and Gartner disagree on the number two spot -- IDC has Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) at number two and a market share of 13% while Gartner sees Acer now in number two with a 13% share and Dell slightly behind with 12.4%. Both market research firm believe that Asus was the winner on the quarter with market growth of around 80%. Apparently, Lenovo and Toshiba also significantly outgrew all other players.

"The PC market remains robust, and in a recovery phase, despite challenges to a broader economic recovery, such as slow job growth and a more conservative outlook in Europe and Asia/Pacific," said Jay Chou, research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. "The factors which led to the recent PC rebound -- an aging commercial installed base, a proliferation of low-cost media-centric PCs, and low PC penetration through much of the world -- remain key drivers going forward."

"The surge in consumer activity seen in the past two quarters has started to slow as expected, while commercial replacements continue to grow," said Bob O'Donnell, IDC Vice President for Clients and Displays. "We expect consumer activity to remain healthy, but gradually slow through the end of the year, while commercial market growth will be more stable, reflecting a planned replacement cycle over the next several years."

"The preliminary second quarter results indicate ongoing improvement of the PC market, and it marks the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth on a year-over-year basis," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "End-user spending grew approximately 13% in the second quarter. Average selling prices (ASPs) continue to decline, but at a much slower rate compared with the last two years."

"Mini-notebook shipment growth slowed significantly in the second quarter of 2010," Kitagawa said. "Mini-notebook shipment growth still exceeded growth rates of the overall mobile PC market, but mini-notebook growth slowed to the low 20% range compared with more than 70% in the last two quarters. This slowdown indicates that mini-notebooks are entering a mature growth stage."

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