PC shipments are expected to grow by 12 per cent this year, according to Gartner.

The analyst firm's regular survey of industry sales said that strong demand from the developing world for desktops and laptops will keep overall growth high, and that sales are expected to grow at 11 per cent in 2008.

The results are in line with recently published global PC forecasts from IDC.

"We expect growth to run a bit stronger during the rest of 2007 as mobile PCs maintain their momentum and strong emerging market growth supports desk-based PCs," said George Shiffler, a research director at Gartner.

"However, we think that the climate of uncertainty created by recent events in the global financial markets casts some downside risk on our forecast."

Gartner believes that the market will slow early next year relative to its previous forecast as desk-based PC growth suffers a payback for the strong growth posted in the first half of 2007.

"But the market should come back in line with our previous expectations later in the year as desk-based PCs experience stronger growth with the onset of a new replacement cycle," said Shiffler.

Emerging markets made up 70 per cent of this year's growth, according to Gartner, despite accounting for less than half of the PCs sold worldwide. Mature markets grew by just seven per cent.

Gartner maintained that fears of a global recession slowing computer sales are unlikely to amount to much, since the world economy has "sufficient buoyancy to ride out the current financial storm".