We believe we should be able to maintain our relative growth premium and market share gains going forward in EMEA, he said in an interview with ComputerWire. However he added the caveat that as the company’s sales grow, maintaining the absolute, year-on-year revenue growth rate in EMEA is likely to get harder, because it will be growing from a larger base.

In its second quarter figures announced last Thursday, the company saw the best volume improvement in EMEA. Second-quarter shipment growth in EMEA was 30%, 12 points higher than the average of other competitive companies in the region, Dell claimed. It also said it saw a 44% rise in server shipments, and a 60% increase in total storage revenue.

Total sales in EMEA were up 30%, compared to an equally impressive 29% growth rate in Asia-Pacific and Japan. That growth was not quite matched in the Americas market, where Dell’s revenue growth was 16%. However putting all of its geographies together, Dell saw total sales of $11.7 billion, a company record and up 20% year on year.

Predicting the future of Dell’s business, the company’s CEO Kevin Rollins said Dell’s third-quarter product shipments should be 21% higher than in the year-ago period. That will give total sales of around $12.5 billion, up 18%, and earnings per share of $0.33, a 27% increase.

According to Bell, the latest results were particularly impressive because component costs have been flat in the first half. Component costs usually decline a percent or half a percent each week, said Bell. That usually helps us because since we hold no inventory, we are able to pass those savings onto consumers faster than the competition. That hasn’t been the environment in the first half, so we’re pretty pleased with our results. On a conference call last week, CFO Jim Schneider said he expects component costs to begin to fall again this quarter.

Bell also picked printers and the area of so-called enhanced services as showing particularly strong growth in EMEA. These services include backup services, Windows migration services, Active Directory services and the like. Last quarter we saw growth in this segment of 72% in EMEA, said Bell.

Worldwide, meanwhile, sales from software and peripheral products increased 31%, helped by sustained strong demand for Dell printers, the company said. Printers are being rolled out to new countries, including Japan in the second quarter and China in Q3. The company said its overall printing and imaging business is now at a $1 billion annual run-rate.

As always Dell generated plenty of cash in the quarter, adding $700 million in cash to take its total stockpile to $11.8 billion.