Apple also held the number one vendor position in 1994, with a 22.9% marketshare, or 2,349,000 multimedia PCs. Units shipped by Apple in 1995 were up by more the 1.5 million to 3,931,000. In spite of the increased number of units shipped, Dataquest found an overall slip in Apple's and other US system manufacturers' marketshare. The survey revealed a growing Asian market for multimedia PC systems supplied by companies such as NEC, Acer, Fujitsu, Highscreen, and Escom. From 1994 to 1995, NEC more than tripled the number of systems from 445,000 to 1,465,000.

Bruce Ryon, director and principal analyst at Dataquest, said, "The Asian markets really embraced the multimedia PC in 1995. All indications are that multimedia will be integrated at a much higher rate in the Asian markets than in the US. Multimedia PCs have held at a 42% average of all PCs sold in the US for the last six quarters, but multimedia desktop PCs in the Asian markets are already at greater than 50% of all PCs sold."

Newsbytes notes that, while Apple is the number one vendor of multimedia PCs, followed by Packard Bell with a 14.4% marketshare in 1995, the study does not distinguish these results by operating systems. Almost all of the systems shipped by other manufacturers use the Microsoft Windows platform. This means Apple shipped more units than any other manufacturer, but Windows-based machines outsold Macintosh machines by more than 8-to-1, on average.

The top four US vendors by worldwide marketshare were: Apple (18.8%), Packard-Bell (14.4%), Compaq (9.3%), and IBM (7.4%). Globally, the multimedia PC market more than doubled from 1994 to 1995. A multimedia PC contains a CD-ROM drive, sound card, and speakers.

(Patrick McKenna/19960618/Press Contact: Tom McCall, Dataquest, 408-468-8312)