Photo: Zeusandhera / Flickr

We’ve know for some time now that Microsoft’s Windows 7 OS is a sales beast. We watched it race out the gates, soar past 150 million users, sell more than 7 every 7 seconds, and eclipse its predecessor Windows Vista in no time. In short, Microsoft’s operating system team has had much to celebrate.

More celebrations

Well, just as it seemed time for the team to put the champagne bottles away and get back to work, Statcounter.com has reported that the Windows 7 OS now has 25 per cent of the PC market share, with its predecessor from two generations ago, Windows XP, slipping towards the 50 per cent marker. What’s more, it is inevitable that Microsoft’s current operating system will continue to chew up market share, and will certainly be the biggest threat to Windows XP’s long time dominance.

Where to next?

Back in October, it was reported that Microsoft’s current OS crossed the 240 million licenses sold threshold. As impressive as that is, current estimates have Windows 7 crossing the 300 million licenses sold before the year’s end. Seriously, folks, if each person in the world had just one computer, Microsoft’s current OS would be on in one in seven of them. Unreal.

The problem

While it is silly to look at these Windows 7 OS numbers with any measure of gloom, Microsoft should be worried that its dominance is limited to the desktop domain, while the computing world is making an inevitable shift towards mobile. And while it stands to reason that the PC market won’t exactly fall off a cliff, Microsoft wants to ensure that its biggest threats – Apple and Google – don’t have a way to erode its business. Well, those same two threats are the ones looking like winning the mobile computing revolution, much to Team Redmond’s dismay.

Photo: iSuppli

iSuppli, the computer industry research firm, has reported that worldwide shipments of PCs have experienced record-breaking growth in Q1 2010, with Acer, in particular, enjoying a surge in PC market share.

Thanks, Asia

The worldwide PC market grew an astonishing 22.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010 off of the back of strong growth in the Asian market. This almost implausible figure represents the highest growth in a single quarter iSuppli Corp has ever recorded since it began tracking PC shipments. While Q1 2009 saw shipment of 66.5 million units, Q1 2010 saw shipments of 81.5 million units, for a year-on-year increase of 13.6 million PCs.

A weak 2009 helped exaggerate the growth

Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at iSuppli explained to PC World that 2009’s poor performance added to the luster of 2010’s strong performance. He said: ‘this record growth resulted from strong sales in the first quarter of 2010 combined with weak conditions during the first three months of 2009.’

The recession – and recessionary fears – resulted in a reduction in spending on both the enterprise front and for home users, but with the recession seemingly behind us, buyers have flocked back to stocking up on PCs.

The big winner? Acer

Photo: Acer

Acer, who are now the second biggest computer manufacturer by volume behind only HP, were the big winners. The company’s year-on-year Q1 growth amounted to a whopping 47.1 per cent, driven by its focus on the notebook market, according to iSuppli. This resulted in Acer’s global PC market share growing from 11.1 to 13.3 per cent in 2010. HP now sits only 6.3 percentage points ahead of Acer in terms of global PC market share. But that is not to say HP’s PC market share has slid. It’s remained stable at 19.6 per cent, meaning Acer is taking this share from everybody else.

Given the emergence of the tablet market, it will be interesting to see if it accounts for a significant percentage of the personal computing industry come the middle of 2011.