Some Good News About the PC Market

Amid the gloom of the financial markets, it's easy to forget that regular people all around the world still have a lot of good reasons to go out and buy a computer. Gartner Group's numbers show that worldwide PC  shipments grew 15% in the third quarter. While the U.S. grew by a hair, most of the growth came from Europe, the Middle East and Africa -- but that's still good for the U.S. The top two PC makers globally are U.S. companies: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Dell (DELL).

Let's also hope that Gartner analyst Mika Kitagawa is proven right. She says that the strongest PC segment -- mobile PCs -- will grow 20% the next three quarters vs. the year before. So in the teeth of the economic crisis, Gartner is predicting strong growth for laptops.

There might be a looming problem here for Dell and H-P, though. With the economy down, the most excitement in computing is coming from small, stripped-down notebooks that cost less than $500, like the ASUS EeePC. The strongest players in that market so far are Asian companies ASUS and Acer. Gartner warns that the other computer makers need to respond.