News 

The vendor says the European consumer market is a "battleground" on price, but despite the downturn in revenue it still recorded a pre-tax profit increase of 15%, equating to an increase of 105 million euros from 91 million euros for the year ending March 2008.

"We want to strengthen the consumer area, as there's lots of innovation coming first into consumer business, and we want to take advantage of that for our commercial customers," says chief executive Bernd Bischoff.

The firm says its servers and its commercial notebooks remain two areas of solid growth, despite the troubles elsewhere.

And Bischoff says his company will be putting more emphasis on services, another successful area. "Over the next three years the company aims to increase services revenue significantly, capitalising on the formation of an integrated sales force and the definition of an industry-leading portfolio."