IDC Japan has announced the results of their survey of PC shipments in Japan during 2004. In total, approximately 13.4 millions PCs were sold with notebooks outselling desktops by a margin of 140,000 units. 2004 was a bumper year for sales at Dell and HP Japan but things weren't so good at Sony and Apple. Just goes to show good design doesn't count for everything.

A total of 13.4 million units were shipped; an increase of 4.6% compared to the previous year. The home PC market shrank by 3.4% to 5.12 million units but this was offset by growth in the business market of 10.2% to 8.28 million units.

In terms of product type, 6.4 million desktop PCs were shipped (an increase of 3.7%) but this was outstripped by the shipment of 6.54 million portable PCs (notebooks).

The top three manufacturers in terms of market share remained unchanged - NEC, Fujitsu and Dell. However, Dell continued their strong growth to post a 20.9% increase in sales. The top three manufacturers accounted for just over half of the total shipments (50.7%).

Sony fell from 5th to 7th in this year's rankings; one place lower than their position in Gartner's equivalent survey. IBM Japan and HP Japan improved to 5th and 6th respectively. In particular, HP recorded a 33% increase in sales for the year; the greatest increase by any manufacturer.

4th place Toshiba improved sales 10.2% on the back of strong interest in their Qosmio line of AV notebooks. Panasonic also recorded good sales with an improvement of 28.2%. However, 10th placed Apple saw sales drop 15.8% due to supply issues with the iMac.

An increase in shipments of 2.3% to 13.71 million units is predicted for 2005.

Inspired by:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0224/idc.htm

Homepage:
http://www.idcjapan.co.jp/