Sales of computers in the Republic and the North fell by almost 15 per cent during the third quarter as consumers and businesses were affected by the global economic downturn.

During the same period, demand for PCs in western Europe fell by 11 per cent compared to the third quarter of 2000, said international research group Gartner Dataquest.

This research confirms that continued weakness in the US electronics hardware market has spread to western Europe. Gartner said more than 80,000 computers were shipped here during the third quarter of 2001, down from 95,000 during the same period last year.

Dell was the only major computer manufacturer to increase the number of computers it shipped, up to 27,180 units from 25,953 in the third quarter last year. This helped the firm boost its Irish market share to 33.6 per cent, up from 27.3 per cent last year.

Dell was also the only major manufacturer to report a shipment increase in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. It increased its market share to 8.6 per cent, up from 7.7 per cent.

Compaq increased its Irish market share to 22 per cent, despite the number of units shipped declining by 9.9 per cent during the quarter.

Fujitsu Siemens, NEC, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway all lost market share and shipped fewer units than they had during the third quarter of 2000. Gateway, which announced its exit from the EMEA markets in September, saw its market share in the Republic slump to 2.1 per cent from 7.2 per cent last year.

Apple Computer shipped about 1,500 units in the quarter and has a market share of less than 2 per cent, said Gartner.

PC shipments in western Europe, Middle East and Africa totalled 8.66 million units in the third quarter of 2001, a 6 per cent decrease compared with the same last period last year.

Gartner analyst Mr Brian Gammage said the difficult conditions had favoured some smaller PC vendors as leading vendors lost market share.