Low prices, Internet fuel PC sales

Lower system prices, economic recovery and the Internet helped spur strong growth in worldwide PC sales in the second quarter of 1999, according to industry analysts.

Preliminary statistics from Dataquest show that sales of personal computers grew 26.4 percent worldwide when compared to the same period in 1998, with all regions of the world experiencing strong PC shipment growth.

Figures show all of the top-tier vendors experienced shipment growth of more than 30 percent. Dell and IBM experienced the strongest year-over-year worldwide growth with increases of 50 and 47 percent, respectively.

Analysts, however, note that during the second quarter of last year, some of the leading vendors scaled back shipments to reduce inventory buildup from the previous quarter. As a result, shipment growth in the second quarter of 1999 looks higher than real end-user demand.

The full story is available at www.dataquest.com .