All manufacturers shipped more PCs in the quarter than a year earlier as more individuals accessed the Internet to swap e-mail and surf the Web and as firms continued to show a healthy appetite for new models amid a mild economic recovery. Nec's share fell from 30.1 pern cent due in part to a 159 per cent surge in shipments of relative newcomer Sony, earning it a 7.1 per cent market share. Sony was fourth behind number-two Fujitsu Ltd which secured 19.1 per cent and third-place IBM Japan, the Japanese unit of International Business Machines Corp.

Soon-to-be listed Sotec Co, which makes stripped down, low-priced PCs, pushed its market share to 4.3 per cent from 1.8 per cent a year earlier, marking a 238 per cent gain. Notebook computer shipments made up 51.8 per cent of overall sales, overtaking desktops for the first time. Multimedia research's data includes figures from the Japanese arms of US computer giants such as gateway Inc and Dell Computer Corp, excluded in last week's Japan Electronic Industry Development Aassociation (JEIDA) data. Shipments from those two US makers rose at a slower rate than the previous year as they turned to online and corporate sales, multimedia research said in a report.