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IDC says PCs A-OK

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit

The PC market did a little better than expected in the first quarter, so IDC is raising its forecast for the full year just a tad, it announced Tuesday.

The researcher has been expecting overall PC growth to decline for the last couple of years as mature economies grow saturated with PCs. That was the case in Western Europe and the U.S., where shipment growth fell by a larger-than-expected amount. But emerging markets, especially Asia, continue to push the market with strong growth exceeding IDC's forecasts. Overall, first-quarter growth checked in at 12.6 percent, beating previous expectations of 11.8 percent.

As a result, IDC raised its 2006 growth target to 10.8 percent, up a little from its previous expectation of 10.5 percent growth. It also boosted its 2007 growth forecast from 10.7 to 11.7 percent, as it believes consumers and businesses that had planned to buy PCs along with Windows Vista this year will simply delay their purchases until 2007, the new target date for the operating system.