"With its record performance during the last three months of 2010, the worldwide PC business took another step toward becoming a market generating 100 million units per quarter," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst at iSuppli. "With the market coming back strong amid growth in the mid-teens, the PC industry will look back on 2010 as a year that exceeded expectations."

Though much of the growth in the last two years took place in the quarters immediately following the 2009 low point, the tech sector is still looking up.

By the third quarter last year, the Nasdaq and the other major U.S. exchanges were already back up to the level they were at before Wall Street imploded in September 2008. Tech had a lot to do with instilling confidence in the markets. Though tech stocks slumped for most of the third quarter last year as fears of a double-dip recession took hold, IT companies, reporting strong sales especially to businesses, started to lead markets after the U.S. Labor Day holiday at the beginning of September.

Now, computer shares on the exchange are up an average of 1.56 percent since Jan. 1 and telecom stock are up 0.13 percent -- both better than any other major sector aside from industrials. The Nasdaq itself is up 1.82 percent since the beginning of the year and 14 percent for the last 12 months.