PC growth slows in the U.S., OK overseas

Most investors probably think that PC sales in the U.S. are a bit slow these days because of the recession. Now, they can sleep better because industry figures for Q2 show they are right. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Gartner Inc. said world-wide PC shipments grew 16% in the period, with U.S. shipments growing 4.2%."

The only real warning sign in the data is that units sales growth is slowing some in Asia. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) still have the largest market shares worldwide while Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) shipments grew 38% in the U.S. during the period.

The important news is that Asia may not be able to make up for slowing U.S. sales growth. If formerly hot markets like China and India are not doing terribly well, the entire PC industry is in for a choppy time.

The data contradicts information from the recent Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) earnings. Not only is the company doing well, it said the rest of the year looked bright. Someone must be doing OK selling PCs and servers somewhere. The Gartner research appears to say otherwise.

For investors in PC and chip companies, it appears the information about how the industry is doing has become confused. Now they can join shareholders in almost every other sector of the market where no one seems to have a handle on what is happening.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.