Portables Continue to Fly Off the Shelf in Central and Eastern Europe in 1Q05

Eastern Europe Russia Poland Ukraine

IDC: The PC market of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) again expanded in 1Q05, with shipments reaching 2.57 million units, up 23.0% compared to the same period the previous year. First-quarter PC Tracker, unit shipments of notebooks surged by 68.6% over the same period last year. By contrast, desktop shipments rose a more modest but still healthy 15.3%, while x86 server shipments jumped 12.3%. Desktops led the market in overall number, outselling portables by 1.8 to 1, largely because of lower prices and sales packages that bundled desktops with various peripherals, like printers, scanners, speakers, and DVD drives.

Although there was growth across the region, the lack of large projects in some of the more mature markets dampened growth as a whole. This means the retail sector carried the weight of the market and that countries with a thriving retail channel exhibited the strongest gains.

Russia was again the largest single country market for PCs in CEE in 1Q05. Poland was second and Ukraine was third. Together, these markets represented almost 72% of PC shipments in CEE in the first quarter of this year. When looking exclusively at the portables market, the ranking was Russia, Poland, and then Czech Republic, where shipments were more than twice that of those in Ukraine. In terms of uptake per person. Slovenia is leaving the other countries in the dust. Its average of nearly 17 PCs per 1,000 people is significantly larger than the 11.3 for the Czech Republic in second and the less than 9.3 for Croatia in third."

IDC's delivers timely intelligence and an inclusive database that details changes and trends in the highly competitive CEE (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Rest of CEE) PC markets. The tracker enables users to view data by volume, value, country, year, quarter, vendor, brand, processor brand, and channel. It provides comprehensive analysis of the region's PC markets. It also includes easy-to-read summaries that break down volume and value by form factor, vendor, and end-user segment. PC Quarterly Tracker Publ 20050531