EMEA PC shipments have increased 3.6% from the same stage last year, according to research specialists Gartner.

The figure of 29.7 million sales for Q4 2009 compares favourably to the same quarter last year, while worldwide PC shipments increased 22% overall within the same period.

"The EMEA PC market was finally on the upward growth curve in the fourth quarter of 2009, and was the last major region across the world to do so," said Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group in EMEA. "The quarter over quarter increase was nearly 17% indicating a return to seasonal patterns."

In the fourth quarter of 2009, the western European PC market saw growth, although the eastern Europe PC market remains weak and showed decline, despite some slow signs of improvement in some countries. Consumer spending helped to compensate for the reduction in IT budgets and professional PC spending, meaning the market did not decline as rapidly as expected in 2009.

Mini-notebooks were the dominant growth platform, while total mini-notebook volumes represented more than a fifth of the total EMEA mobile PC market.

Within the vendor figures, although Acer had the highest year on year growth at 37.1%, and HP posted a decline of 2.6%, HP remains top.

www.gartner.com