Consumer sales and laptops were the main drivers for strong PC sales growth in Europe, Middle East and Africa in Q1, according to IDC's latest figures.

IDC reported year-on-year growth of 15.7 per cent for the first quarter of 2005. Business demand stayed strong especially among smaller customers. IDC looks at branded shipments of desktops, notebooks and x86 servers, and excludes OEM sales from all vendors.

Sales of desktop machines grew almost ten per cent while demand for notebook machines jumped 30 per cent compared to the first quarter of last year. Competition among manufacturers and the continued strength of the euro have all helped the market.

Increased use of broadband is also pushing demand for notebooks and desktops.

HP remains in first place but failed to grow as fast as the market. Dell is in second spot and managed growth of 20 per cent in EMEA expanding into the small business and consumer markets. Acer took third place and Fujitsu was in fourth place.

But fellow analysts Context took a less joyful view of the market. They see sales falling this month, and for the last three months. Looking at resellers they found sales were down 7.4 per cent compared with February 2004. Switzerland fell fastest - sales declined 33 per cent.

Germany and the UK saw falls of 24 per cent and 23.3 per cent respectively. But sales rose 38.6 per cent in Spain and by 21 per cent in Italy. Context looks at Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK.®

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