Boom! PC sales up 15 percent in third quarter

Read the headline and you might wonder what all the fuss about "recession" is all about: Per Gartner's latest research, computer sales worldwide climbed a whopping 15 percent on a unit basis in Q3 2008 vs. the same period in 2007, topping 80.6 million units shipped.

Before you start celebrating that the recession's been averted, though, best to consider where virtually all the growth in the market came from: Netbooks (or mini-notebooks), the low-cost laptops that normally hit retail at $500 or less.

These machines have clearly been cannibalizing low-end PC sales, so watch for hefty price competition this holiday season as vendors try to encourage netbook buyers to spend a few hundred bucks extra on more powerful machines.

Still #1 in worldwide sales is HP, with Dell slipping further behind. Acer is #3 worldwide. The figures are shuffled in the U.S.: Dell is #1 here, with HP #2 and Apple taking the #3 slot based on a near 30 percent annualized growth in computer sales since 2007. Can the company keep it up in a sagging economic climate? (Gartner thinks so and says to expect continued growth from Apple in the education and home markets.)

The bigger question is what will happen with the netbook market. While these have been all the rage for a year now, the novelty is bound to wear off at some point as buyers realize they simply aren't cut out for serious work. Last holiday season was huge for netbooks, but again, owing to the economy, I wonder how many will be bought this year. Will consumers keep snapping them up as cheaper, stopgap alternatives to more powerful computers, or will buyers choose instead to save their money and put it towards a future purchase?

What are your plans when it comes to laptop buying this year?