Is HP top PC maker in US?

Global shipments of personal computers fell 7.1 percent in the first three months of the year, but the decline was smaller than expected and research group IDC on Wednesday said the industry could turn around by the end of the year.

A second research group, Gartner Inc, calculated first-quarter PC shipments fell 6.5 percent from the same period in 2008. The two groups use different methods to track PC shipments.

IDC had predicted worldwide shipments would fall 8.2 percent in the quarter. The US market was also much stronger than IDC forecast, with PC shipments falling 3.1 percent from a year ago, compared with an expected 8.9 percent drop. By Gartner's count, US shipments dipped less than one percent.

"Based on the U..being the center of the financial crisis, and looking at trends of last recession, we were concerned that demand and growth would continue to decline," said Loren Loverde, an IDC program director.

Instead, the US PC market, which took a beating in the fourth quarter, benefited from intense price competition among PC makers as well as the growing demand for netbooks, or small, cheap, low-powered laptops.

Both groups reported that Hewlett-Packard Co used the trend to overtake Dell Inc as the top PC maker in the US HP's lower prices and more established brand among shoppers helped push its market share to 27.6 percent. Dell's share fell to 26.3 percent as it struggled to reorganize its consumer business, according to IDC.

Taiwan's Acer Inc, the No 3 PC maker in the US and a force in the netbook market, snagged 10.5 percent of the market. Apple Inc's share edged up to 7.6 percent, and Japan-based Toshiba Corp, the fifth-largest, took 6.6 percent.

Worldwide, HP's market share crept up to 20.5 percent while Dell's slipped a few points to 13.6 percent, IDC reported. HP's shipments rose 2.9 percent as Dell's plunged 16.7 percent.

No 3 Acer captured 11.6 percent of PC shipments worldwide. China's Lenovo Group's share was flat at 7 percent, and Toshiba's share edged up to 5.4 percent.

Chipmaker Intel Corp. on Tuesday said personal computer sales "bottomed out" in the first quarter. Neither IDC nor Gartner wanted to match Intel's bold assessment, but IDC took a more optimistic stance.

"I don't think Intel's comment was meant to say we're going to come roaring back next quarter," Loverde said. "It's likely we won't see growth deteriorate from here."

Before the release of Wednesday's numbers, IDC had forecast an 8.4 percent decline in the second quarter and a 4.5 percent drop in the third before seeing growth in the fourth quarter.

George Shiffler, research director at Gartner, said in a statement that retailers may be restocking inventory, but "this restocking should not be interpreted as a recovery in PC end-user demand. It's still unclear if the global PC market has hit the bottom."

Agencies

Is CRM by SaaS cheaper for corporates?

Organisations are experiencing project savings of 25 to 40 per cent by deploying CRM applications in software as a service (SaaS) mode l, according to Gartner Inc.

Gartner said that its clients were making these savings from reduced application expense and lower implementation costs.

Much of the savings that organisations are making is a result of a lesser dependence on large external service providers (ESPs), which typically help businesses improve customer processes as part of the CRM engagement but which play less of a role when SaaS is involved.

Among the top 100 SaaS deployments in 2007 and 2008, fewer than 10 per cent involved a large system integrator or an external enterprise business consulting team. This would indicate that the role of ESPs in designing, measuring and driving CRM process improvements will diminish at enterprises deploying SaaS solutions for CRM through 2012.

"Due to the increasing use of SaaS for CRM, ESPs -- which include business consulting and system integration services -- will have less influence on CRM processes as SaaS accelerates," said Michael Maoz, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "This could result in an erosion of customer satisfaction among large enterprises that invest in SaaS solutions unless they invest their own resources to measure and manage long-term CRM process improvements."

Gartner expects a similar drop in customer experience scores from midsize businesses. They're a stronger target for SaaS offerings, and they rarely use ESPs for business consulting skills.
Maoz said that many projects that involve complex customer service contact centers are reported to be "on hold" until better references are available from the large enterprise application vendors that are in the process of releasing a new generation of their products.

However, he said that SaaS is the deployment model of choice for an increasing number of projects. Gartner predicts that all forms of SaaS-delivered customer service applications in the call center will grow by more than 20 per cent per year through 2012, and this will deliver significant savings. By 2012, 30 per cent of new customer service and support application investments will be through the SaaS model.

Because SaaS applications lack sophistication in BPM and process design, and due to the absence of ESPs offering business process advice, the growing spread of SaaS CRM applications threatens CRM efforts.

"There will be significant savings in infrastructure and resource costs in migrating to SaaS, but to put that money to work in customer process improvements, careful performance measurement of 'before' and 'after' project spending will need to be performed," Maoz said. "If this does not happen, then the savings will be shortsighted, as they will not improve the relationship with the end customer."

In a difficult economic climate, it stands to reason that many businesses will make similar choices and choose not to measure the benefits of the SaaS model. Gartner's advice to organisations deploying SaaS for CRM is to ask the software solution provider for its CRM process credentials and those of its ESP partners.