Increased advertising by vendors, price reductions and growing telecommunication-company sales channels have led to an increase in PC shipments to Africa as the global PC market has contracted, according to the IDC Quarterly PC tracker.

While the global PC market declined by 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011, shipments to the African continent increased by 3 percent while those to East Africa jumped by 76 percent. Total PC shipments to Africa during the first quarter were 1.3 million, while shipments to East Africa totaled 147,669, IDC said.

The uptake of PCs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia has been largely driven by the landing of two fiber-optic cables, which has led to affordable connectivity.

Global PC makers like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer have increased the number of marketing and sales channels they use, with mobile-phone companies playing a major role. Increasing demand has led to reduced prices, which in turn has lowered the attraction of gray-market computers.

"This quarter was a continuation of the dynamic development in 2010, supported by the resumption of commercial demand and strong advertising and promotion efforts by vendors, as well as their efforts to find new distribution channels and strengthen existing ones, which helped to stymie unofficial (gray-market) shipments," said Stanley Kamanguya, an analyst at IDC East Africa.

Desktop sales declined year over year from 60 percent of total sales to 40 percent in the first quarter this year. For notebooks, the trend was the opposite.

"IDC expects that desktop share will stabilize at this level as desktops have a longer life span than notebooks and therefore uptake from educational institutions, government and corporate enterprises will continue," Kamanguya added.

HP maintained its position as the leading brand due to strong marketing, but aggressive channel recruitment has led to increased shipments by Dell. Acer also recorded high growth, mainly due to partnerships with telcos to provide bundled data services. Year-over-year HP shipments grew by 46 percent, Dell shipments jumped 600 percent and Acer shipments increased 200 percent, IDC said.

Kenya recorded the highest growth at 107 percent, Uganda was at 89 percent and Tanzania at 39 percent, while Ethiopia grew at 18 percent. IDC expects the East African market to grow at the rate of 35 percent to 45 percent in 2011.