After falling to third place last year behind perennial leader HP and Acer, iSuppli has reported this week that Dell has retaken second place in the PC manufacturing market.
Overall, PC shipments increased this quarter to 82 million, with Dell taking a 12.8 percent share, just beating out Acer at 12.4 percent.
HP remained the leader at 18 percent.
Despite a decent jump in overall sales, all three of the top manufacturers saw a sales decline. Lenovo, on the other hand, saw an 18.6 percent jump in sales, good enough to take 10.1 percent of the market.
Acer and HP saw the largest declines, with sales falling 6.2 and 6.3 percent, respectively, from the quarter preceding this one.
HP has spent the last sixteen quarters in first place.
Graph via iSuppli:
Result for: declines
Toshiba has hinted this week that it may be leaving the LCD production business, a way to curb ever-increasing losses.
Corporate senior executive VP Fumio Muraoka says the strong yen, steep price declines in the units, and shrinking demand may lead to Toshiba needing to leave the business.
Toshiba Mobile Display posted an operating loss of $211 million USD for the months of April to December 2009, which followed losses of $180 million and $110 million for the division for the same periods in 2008 and 2007.
The division used to be a partnership with Panasonic but Toshiba bought out the entire stake in March.
Result for: declines
Last week we reported that the Nintendo Wii, among other consoles, took a serious hit to its sales, seeing a 57 percent drop year-on-year for the month of May.
The drop marked the third consecutive month the Wii saw substantial declines in sales. Supply issues are no longer a problem either, as there are ample amounts on store shelves.
Analysts are now coming out in droves declaring the console has reached a saturation point at its current price and price cut is necessary to stop the continued decline in sales. A $50 price cut, bringing the Wii to the same price as that of the low-end Xbox 360 Arcade seems to be a good point.
Nintendo continues to deny any price cut is in the works however. We have “no plans to reduce its prices at this time.”
“We expect Nintendo to cut the price of the Wii before the holiday,” adds Wedbush Morgan video game analyst Michael Pachter. The Wii is the only console to not see its price tag slashed since launch.
BMO Capital analyst Edward Williams wrote that he believes the Wii “is selling in a more traditional seasonal pattern.”
Major US retailer GameStop CEO Daniel DeMatteo agrees with the sentiment and believes a minimum $50 USD price cut is coming to the Wii by the Q3 2009.
