Worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter of 2009 fell by the largest historic rate in the seven years iSuppli has been tracking the market, as weaker-than-expected desktop sales dragged down the industry, according to iSuppli.

PC shipments in the first quarter of 2009 amounted to 66.5 million units, an 8.1% decline from 72.3 million units during the same period in 2008, and a 14.4% drop from 77.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

“The worldwide recession sparked by the credit crisis slammed PC shipments for the second quarter in succession during the first three months of 2009,” said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research at iSuppli. “The first-quarter performance of the worldwide PC market was worse than iSuppli had expected in its prior forecast, which called for a 4% decline in shipments compared to the same period in 2008. After a long period of immunity to the global downturn, the economic crisis finally has begun to impact the PC market.” (continuare…)

Looking back at the product offerings at the recently concluded Computex Taipei 2009, you couldn’t help notice that companies highlighting mobile DTV solutions based on the DVB standard were focusing on free-to-air solutions (DVB-T) as opposed to solutions targeting the subscription-based DVB-H standard, despite the latter being the technology standard developed specifically for digital mobile DTV.

While DVB-H (the H is for handheld) has several advantages over DVB-T for mobile TV solutions, such as time slicing to reduce power consumption, system makers indicated that issues still need to be overcome before DVB-H ecosystems can be successfully developed. (continuare…)

Hewlett-Packard’s (HP’s) PC market share in Taiwan reached 11.5% in first-quarter 2009 and the company expects to maintain the share in the second quarter, according to Monty Wong, president of HP Taiwan citing figures from IDC Taiwan.

HP’s notebook market share in Taiwan also grew from 11% in the first quarter of 2008 to 14.8% in the first quarter of 2009, Wong added.

HP has announced two new desktop PC series in Taiwan – the Pavilion Slimline 5000 series, made by Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) and Compaq Presario 3000 series, shared by Foxconn and Pegatron Technology.

HP also recently announced the 12-inch Pavilion dv2 notebook series, made by Flextronics, 13-inch Pavilion dv3 and 14-inch Pavilion dv4 series manufactured by Compal Electronics, and 15.6-inch and 16-inch Pavilion dv6 made by Quanta Computer.