Hewlett-Packard (HP) has secured its crown as king of the PC market after posting its strongest financial results since 2000 on the back of rocketing laptop sales.

Turnover for the third quarter 2007 stood at $25.4bn compared to $21.9bn in the same quarter a year ago. Net profit, on a non generally applied accounting principle basis stood at $1.9bn an increase of 29 per cent on the $1.5bn posted in Q3 2006.

The main driver for growth was HP's Personal Systems Group, which saw turnover shoot up 29 per cent to $8.9bn. Notebook revenue mushroomed 54 per cent during the quarter, with desktop growth a more modest 12 per cent up.

HP's other units - Imaging and Printing, Enterprise Storage and Servers and HP Services saw turnover grow eight per cent, 10 per cent and eight per cent respectively.

Software also performed well, growing 74 per cent in the quarter, led by growth in HP's recent acquisition of Mercury Interactive. Excluding the Mercury figures, HP OpenView sales grew 14 per cent year on year.

Mark Hurd, chief executive of HP, said: "HP's latest results demonstrate continued strength across each of our key businesses and geographies with our best revenue growth since 2000. We are executing increasingly well in creating demand for our products and services, and we are continuing to become a more efficient organisation."

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HP raises guidance