As recently reported on this blog, HP had impressive results on the eBay USA platform during Q3 2008. What has happened since then? Last month, HP posted a 13% loss in profit for its fourth quarter and Dell reported a 48% decline in profit for the same period.

Despite the downturn in offline sales for both HP and Dell, HP’s online sales have seen a different trend. In Q4 08, there was an 89% increase in new HP laptop sales on the eBay USA platform over Q4 2007, a rise from $5.29 million USD to $10.01 million USD. Once again, HP surpasses Dell in this category for sales of this new products. Dell product sales on eBay for this category dropped 10% from $18.14 million to $7.32 million USD during this same period.

The popularity of new HP laptops is continuing into the first quarter of 2009. Our data, updated daily, shows that HP’s sales exceed that of Dell by 78.4% from January 01 to March 10 2009; and that HP has already surpassed its own Q1 2008 eBay revenues by 8%.

Will HP’s success on eBay be mirrored in offline retail? The answer will become clear when the first quarter reports are released.