There was a large rise in the sales of tablet PCs in the last three weeks before Christmas, according to the latest figures from IT market researchers CONTEXT. The sales boosted overall European PC unit sales by six per cent in comparison to a year ago, according to in preliminary figures published today.

CONTEXT CEO and co-founder Jeremy Davies said that tablet PCs overtook desktops as the second best-selling PC category in European channel sales during the last three weeks of trading before Christmas. This averaged 20 per cent unit share of all PCs sold.

“The good news is that, despite a drop of 16 per cent in average selling price of a Tablet PC compared to the same period in 2010, the overall share of revenues accounted for by Tablets hovered around 18 per cent.”

We would say then that keyboardless netbooks had been overpriced and had to drop price to boost sales. Sales figures collected by CONTEXT from all the major IT distributors across Europe reveal that Tablet PC sales grew 293 per cent in the final three weeks of pre-Christmas sales.

This was not to the detriment of traditional notebooks as might have been expected, but more so of desktops and particularly netbook PCs. While netbook pre-Christmas unit sales in Europe declined by 42 per cent compared to the same period a year ago, notebook PC sales grew by three per cent and desktop unit sales fell by 13 per cent.

UK sales of PCs grew strongest, with units up by 21 per cent in the final three weeks of sales before Christmas. Despite tough economic times, sales of PCs in Italy rose by 14 per cent in the pre-Christmas rush. Sales went up by 11per cent in Germany, but fell 8 percent in France. There was some Christmas cheer in Spain as PC sales rose 6 per cent compared to the same period last year.