Growth of PC shipments will continue at double-digit rates in the first quarter of 2004, and hold that pace throughout the year, market research company Gartner predicts.
In the first quarter of 2004, PC vendors will ship 44 million units, up 13.3 percent from the first quarter of 2003, Gartner says. Consumer notebooks continue to lead most of the growth as wireless technologies improve and prices fall, the company says.
The rest of the year will see an increase in the number of corporations upgrading their aging PC inventories, Gartner says. This "corporate replacement cycle" has been eagerly awaited for about two years, but has been spread out over a longer period of time compared to the last major replacement cycle in 1999.
Read more: PC World.