By John Oates, 5 August 1998 16:40
NEWS Dell has pushed IBM into third place in European PC sales for the first time, according to the latest figures from Dataquest. Chris Jones, an analyst at Dataquest and one of the authors of the report, said "It will be hard for IBM to get back to number two, Dell's only problem is a slight fall off in the fourth quarter because it doesn't have much retail presence." Compaq still heads the list with a market share of 15.5 per cent. The figures also show that Europe remains the fastest area of growth for desktop sales, seeing an increase of 19.5 per cent. Average selling prices for corporate machines has remained static as businesses begin to move onto new technology, but consumer machines have fallen by as much as 20 per cent. Dataquest claimed the competition for second place could be even closer at the end of the year with Dell being challenged by Siemens or Hewlett-Packard. Ian Darbyshire, programme manager for PC tracking at Input, said the results broadly corresponded with his company's findings, which showed Dell in a comfortable second place. He added that Dell's infrastructure had kept pace with its rapid speed of growth. Darbyshire also predicted further consolidation among manufacturers and in the channel over the next year.
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