Gartner announced their preliminary worldwide personal computer market research results this week. They note in the report that PC market returned to positive growth in 2002, as worldwide PC shipments totaled 132.4 million units, a 2.7% increase from 2001, according to preliminary results from Dataquest, a unit of Gartner. In 2001, worldwide PC shipments declined 4%, but in the second half of 2002, the worldwide PC market had two consecutive quarters of year-on-year PC shipment growth.

What is also important, Carly Fiorina’s Empire is still the number one PC vendor on the planet. Of course, we should note that the total share of Compaq and HP is lower than their share a year ago due to merge and consolidation of businesses. Meanwhile Michael Dell’s horde continues to expand their market presence. Take a look:

Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2002 (Thousands of Units)
Company	2002 Shipments	2002 Market Share (%)	2001 Shipments	2001 Market Share (%)	Growth (%)
Hewlett-Packard	21,478.3	16.2	23,676.8	18.4	-9.3
Dell	20,111.7	15.2	17,004.4	13.2	18.3
IBM	7,927.7	6.0	8,231.6	6.4	-3.7
NEC	4,549.7	3.4	4,912.0	3.8	-7.4
Toshiba	4,237.3	3.2	3,653.8	2.8	16.0
Others	74,045.6	55.9	71,452.7	55.4	3.6
Total	132,350.3	100.0	128,931.2	100.0	2.7

As you may notice, HP’s share tumbled 1.8 points in 2002, while Dell managed to raise its share up 2%. HP continues to reorganize, consolidate and refocus its combined PC entities and its go-to-market strategy. Despite worldwide year-on-year unit declines, HP exhibited a second consecutive quarter of sequential growth in the fourth quarter of 2002. Keep in mind that the first quarter is usually weaker than the fourth, so, it is really hard to predict the result of HP vs Dell “battle” for the first place this year, as the situation on the market changes every day and HP may loose its advantages over Dell by the second quarter this year. On the other hand, since the market rebound is said to happen in the second half of 2003, there is a slight chance that HP can win a couple of points there due to their strong market presence in all segments all around the world especially among commercial PCs. In case home market continues to drive the industry forward significantly, Dell will win additional percents of the market, as it happened in 2002. IBM dropped 0.4 points and something tells me that due to their current strategy they are very likely to slide even more this year. Note that if combining Fujitsu and Fujitsu Siemens, the combined shipments would be in the fourth place in the worldwide PC market, ahead of NEC, who also lost 0.4% in 2002.