Compaq Computer Corp increased its share of the European PC market, with 17.5% of total sales in the first quarter 1999, according to UK market researcher Context Ltd. Despite poor first quarter figures and on the back of last week’s firing of CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer, the troubled firm still managed to increase its share by one% from the year-ago period, the report said.
Next to Compaq, Dell Computer Corp leapfrogged over IBM Corp, with 9.3% of the market compared to IBM’s 9%. Hewlett-Packard Co dropped out of the top five, with 5.9%, to be replaced by Fujitsu with 6.6% and Siemens AG, according to Context.
Decreasing prices and bargain offers gave rise to huge first quarter sales of nearly 6.9 million consumer and desktop PCs, the research firm said, but overall, year-on-year price drops of 19.4% served to lower vendor and reseller margins. The overall European PC market grew 20.5%, according to Context, higher than the 17%-19% international average growth reported Monday by International Data Corp and Dataquest, and only 0.3% lower than IDC’s figures for US sales. France saw the highest growth in sales for the quarter, at 23.1%, compared to the UK’s 19.2%.
