Sales of PCs and x86 servers have grown by 15 per cent in the past 12 months, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

The bulk of the growth has been driven by strong interest in the netbook segment. Gartner singled out Acer and Asus as winners, in particular the latter's EeePC which launched the market for such devices.

"The mini-notebook segment experienced strong growth in the global PC market, led by robust growth in EMEA," said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner's Client Computing Markets group.

"In the North America market, the economic crunch created more interest in the sub-$500 segment. Because the mini-notebook is still a new segment, it is too early to determine whether it created new market opportunities or cannibalised lower priced systems."

HP remains the world's biggest supplier of x86 systems, with 18.4 per cent of the market compared to Dell's 13.6 per cent.

Acer showed the strongest growth of any manufacturer, with sales rising nearly 50 per cent to give it 12.5 per cent of the market.

However, Kitagawa warned of tougher times ahead and a global slowdown in sales due to the overall financial situation.

"The global PC market finally felt the impact of the global economic downturn, and the US professional market experienced the biggest hit," she said.

"The US home market saw definite softness in PC sales after a few quarters of strong growth, while the Asia/Pacific PC market was impacted by a slowdown in China.

"PC growth in Latin America was slow relative to historical levels, but was still in line with the forecast."