Higher information technology spending worldwide boosted sales of personal computers better than expected in the first quarter of the year and Chinese PC makers gained market shares from United States-based rivals, a US-based IT research firm said yesterday.

The global PC sales surged 27 percent annually in the first three months to 84.3 million units, 5.4 percentage points higher than original estimates, thanks to increased IT spending worldwide, according to Gartner Inc.

Meanwhile, Chinese PC makers, including Beijing-based Lenovo Group Ltd, Taiwan-based Acer Inc and ASUS, gained market shares in the first quarter when US-based giants Hewlett-Packard Inc and Dell Inc lost theirs, Gartner said.

"With a relatively positive macroeconomic outlook, business demand expanded," said Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner's principal analyst. "Major PC replacement demand driven by Window 7 will become more apparent in the second half of 2010 and the beginning of 2011."

Analysts attributed the growth in PC sales to the rebound in IT budgets following the global financial crisis last year. Gartner also forecast a 5.3 percent rise in worldwide IT spending to US$3.4 trillion in 2010, and a 4.2 percent increase to more than US$3.5 trillion in 2011.

All the top PC makers' sales grew by double digits but PC makers in Asia saw their sales jump faster.

HP led in the global PC market with sales of 15.3 million units but its market share dropped to 18.2 percent in the first quarter from 19.3 percent a year ago. Also HP's 19.9 percent growth in sales for the period trailed Acer's at 54.3 percent, Lenovo's at 59.2 percent and Toshiba's at 35.8 percent. It also trailed the segment's average quarterly growth of 27.4 percent, Gartner said.

The market share of Dell Inc, the world's No. 3 PC maker, fell to 12.1 percent by the end of the first quarter.

The market share of Lenovo, China's biggest PC maker, rose 1.7 percentage points to 8.3 percent in the first quarter, though it "still highly depends on the domestic market," according to Gartner.