"After a decline in the second quarter of 2009, the PC market in France returned to growth driven by strong purchases in the consumer market," said Isabelle Durand, principal analyst at Gartner, based in France.

The mobile consumer PC market grew 18 per cent mainly as a result of increased shipment of mini-notebooks in the third quarter of 2009. Gartner estimates that 373,000 mini-notebooks were shipped in the third quarter of 2009 in France representing 20 per cent of total mobile PCs. "Without the strong sales of mini-notebooks, the overall PC market in France would have declined 3 per cent in the third quarter," said Ms Durand.

In the third quarter of 2009, the professional market remained weak in both desktop and mobile PC segments with a 5 per cent decline, while the consumer market showed 7 per cent growth year-on-year.

The overall PC market in France was driven by strong mobile PC sales, which accounted for 67 per cent of total PC shipments. Volumes increased 15 per cent year-on-year.

Acer maintained its leadership and increased its share by 2.8 percentage points in the third quarter of 2009. "It continued to achieve strong results in the mobile PC market, and nearly every third mobile PC sold in France was an Acer," said Ms Durand.



HP increased its market share as the No. 2 vendor as a result of its good performance in the consumer mobile PCs segment. On the other hand, Dell continued to suffer from the slowdown in enterprise demand and was the only vendor in the top five ranking to exhibit a decline with an 11.2 per cent decrease year-on-year.

"We expect the PC market in France to continue to show growth during the fourth quarter of 2009, and we forecast that the market in 2009 will see an increase of less than 2 per cent. The release of Windows 7 may help to bring in replacement demand from consumers, and the introduction of thin and light notebooks should also attract their attention," concluded Ms Durand.

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This article is part of a series:

- Western Europe PC Market declined slightly in 3Q/2009

- Acer now tops UK list of PC vendors

- France: Mini-notebooks drove return to growth

- Germany: PC shipments saw return to growth