The Canadian PC market has experienced robust unit growth over the past couple of years; however, competitive pressures continue to rise with price erosion, changing customer preferences, and evolving channel dynamics. IDC's Canadian Quarterly PC Tracker provides a detailed view of the Canadian PC market, key market trends, and the ongoing performance of the leading suppliers of desktops, notebooks, ultraportables, and x86 servers. Clients are able to drill down on the performance of more than 20 vendors and over 80 separate brands across six routes to market and eight customer segments. Quarterly analysis reports also provide an overview of the state and outlook of the Canadian PC market. Through this research service, vendors will have the tools to more effectively reach customers, support channel partners, and achieve sales targets by accelerating inventory turnover rates, reducing product obsolescence, and driving revenue and market share growth.

This product covers the following segments of the Canadian PC market:

• Desktops
• Notebooks
• Ultraportables
• x86 servers

Throughout the year, this product will address the following topics:

• Quarterly unit shipments and end-user spending by form factor, vendor, brand, customer segment, distribution channel, and processor class
• Installed base and price band analysis
• Market forecasts by form factor, customer segment, distribution channel, and average street price
• Historical and forecast qualitative
• Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker telebriefings

• Consumer PC buyer behaviour study
• Commercial PC buyer behaviour study

Our research addresses the following issues that are critical to your success:

1. How large is the market opportunity in each customer segment and sales channel?
2. In which segments is price increasing or decreasing?
3. What objectives are appropriate for the PC vendors' product groups and sales teams?
4. What are the PC vendors' shares within each market segment, and how are PC vendors performing relative to their peers?
5. Are product brands reaching their intended target market, and is there a spillover effect into other customer segments?
6. What are the growth opportunities among the segments, channels, and form factors over the next five to eight quarters?

IDC's Canadian Quarterly PC Tracker service examines how the leading PC companies are positioning themselves to compete in the Canadian PC market. This quarterly tracking service compares the historical and ongoing performance of the vendors that shape the market, providing product family-level detail. Companies tracked include Acer, AMD, Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, LG Electronics, NCR, NEC, Panasonic, Rackable Systems, Seanix, SGI, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, and Unisys.

Throughout the year, this product will offer insight into the latest trends impacting the market.

• Form factor, vendor, brand, customer segment, distribution channel, processor class

• Week 4: Preliminary - top 5 Canadian PC vendor shares
• Week 7: Preliminary - all vendors
• Week 8: Historical published
• Week 10: Forecast published
• Ten hours of telephone inquiry time is included for support questions regarding data usage

IDC's Canadian Quarterly PC Tracker is available on the Internet at www.idctracker.com. The data is accessed through a flexible, interactive interface. Queries can be made directly and then stored for future use. Results of queries can be viewed directly or downloaded into a file on a PC.

This market update and strategy review provides analysis, insights, and in-depth guidance on the PC ecosystem with customized advice.

As a privately held company, IDC believes that our customers are our primary constituency. A large percentage of every revenue dollar is reinvested back into our products, including more analysts, more geographic coverage, and extensive primary research.

Our steady growth over the past 10-plus years reflects our commitment to investing in our customers.