The October-December quarter survey by industry research firm IDC revealed that strong sales of low-cost notebooks in the US during the holiday season led to a notable 24 percent increase in PCs shipped to the country; while global PCs shipments surged 15.2 percent to 85.8 million units during the quarter.

On the whole, 2009 witnessed many ups and downs in the PC market sales – beginning on a dismal note, but showing steady improvement as months went by, and finally managing to post growth over the 2008 figures.

With IDC analyst David Daoud noting that “the US market exploded” during the fourth quarter, his colleague Jay Chou reasoned that the substantial growth in the US market was largely fueled by price cuts that were introduced much earlier in the holiday season this year as compared to the year before.

While low-priced notebooks and netbook computers were the chief contributors to the soaring numbers, year-on-year growth in PC shipments was also boosted by the pent-up demand for new computers, as well as a comparison with a much weaker year-before quarter.

Meanwhile, research house Gartner has reported an even steeper gain during the fourth quarter, saying that PC shipments during the period grew 22.1 percent, with most of the leading PC vendors - Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba - posting big increases.