(RTTNews) - According to market research firm Gartner, Inc. (IT), worldwide PC shipments increased in the third quarter by 0.5% year-over-year to 80.9 million units.
HP continued to lead the worldwide PC market with market share of 19.9%, followed by Acer with 15.4% market share and Dell with 12.8% market share, Gartner said. However, Dell was the top PC vendor in the U.S., the world's largest PC market, in the third quarter, with a market share of 26.2%.
In its preliminary fourth quarter forecast, Gartner said Monday that it expects worldwide PC shipments will total 298.9 million units in 2009, a 2.8% increase from 2008. The forecast is more optimistic than Gartner's final September forecast, which anticipated a 2% decline in shipments for 2009.
HP's Imaging and Printing Group, the company's cash-cow, posted revenue of $6.5 billion for the fourth quarter, down 15% from a year earlier. For the fourth quarter, supplies revenue fell 8%, while commercial hardware revenue declined 32% and consumer hardware revenue dropped 17% compared to a year ago. Printer unit shipments were down 20% during the fourth quarter. This should be a worrying factor for the company.
The company's Enterprise Storage and Servers group generated fourth quarter revenue of $4.2 billion, a decrease of 17% from the comparable year-ago quarter.
After Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) announced its entry into the server market, HP is under added pressure as International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and HP lead that market.
Also, Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Inc. (DELL) has introduced a line of server models in a bid to lure businesses away from IBM and HP. Dell is also planning to raise it sales in the Chinese market, which accounts for at least 5% of the company's global business.
HP's services revenue for the fourth quarter rose 8% year over year to $8.9 billion, boosted mainly by the acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Corp. HP said the integration of EDS is tracking ahead of plan.
The company's software revenue for the fourth quarter fell 16% from a year earlier to $967 million, while financial services revenue rose 5% to $726 million.
During the fourth quarter, HP repurchased about 46 million shares of its common stock for $2.1 billion and ended the quarter with $13.4 billion in gross cash.
In a regulatory filing on Monday, the company said its Board of Directors on November 19 authorized an additional $8.0 billion for future repurchases of its outstanding shares of common stock. As of October 31, HP had about $4.0 billion of share repurchase authorization remaining under the $8.0 billion repurchase authorization approved by the board in September 2008.
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