China underpins the Asia Pacific
PC market’s recovery

IDC’s preliminary results show that the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) PC market grew 18% sequentially and 17% year-on-year in 3Q09 to reach 23.4 million units, beating forecasts by 9%. While portables remained the key growth driver, better than expected procurement from the public sector in China and Taiwan also had an impact. Lenovo remained the top vendor in the region, even though HP continued to make gains against it.
“It’s great to see the PC market picking up here in the region,” said Bryan Ma, Director of Asia/Pacific Personal Systems Research at IDC. “Even though a lot of the momentum may be coming specifically from China, the enthusiasm should start to spread to the point where the entire region gets off on the right foot next year.”
Fortunately, the launch of Windows 7 this week should help to spur more promotions across the region, with consumers adopting the new operating system before enterprises settle in. Ongoing portable PC product developments, ranging from ultrathin notebooks to dual-boot mini-notebooks, can also help to generate more interest, even if not all of the attempts will be successful.
“Although the Singapore PC market continued to be weighed down by the sluggish commercial buying, the consumer segment provided some buoyancy to lift the market past forecasts by 9%,” said Reuben Tan, Senior Manager of Asia/Pacific Personal Systems Research at IDC. “Natural disasters in other Southeast Asian countries, as well as political uncertainty in markets like Pakistan, could be wild cards for 4Q09 though.”