Sales of personal computers in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan rose 10 percent last year despite economic woes and security fears, an industry monitor said yesterday.
Shipments of PCs last year reached 24.9 million units, up from from 22.6 million units in 2001, boosted by sales in the fourth quarter, which were up 15 percent from the same period in 2001, International Data Corp (IDC) said.
"Despite continued economic sluggishness and concerns of global instability in Q4, the Asia-Pacific PC market grew steadily in almost all countries in the region," said Bryan Ma, personal systems research manager at IDC Asia-Pacific.
"Falling component prices, new technology introductions, and an expected increase in IT spending should help to continue this gradual growth in the upcoming quarters, although an uncertain sense of global security could also mute such expectations," he added in an IDC press statement.
Chinese manufacturer Legend beat global brands like HP and IBM, grabbing 13 percent of the regional market in the fourth quarter with more than 900,000 units sold out of the regional total of 6.85 million units.
By comparison, sales were under 600,000 for second-placed HP and around 431,000 for IBM.
IDC noted that fourth placed Dell showed impressive gains in the fourth quarter, particularly in China, Australia and Singapore. In fifth place was Founder, another Chinese brand, followed by Samsung of South Korea.
"Despite the Bali bombings early in the [fourth] quarter, both the Indonesian and Australian markets managed to grow year-on-year," the IDC statement said.
Australia's market benefited from education and consumer purchases, as did the markets in China and Malaysia.
India's PC market grew through consumer promotions as well as purchases from the finance and telecommunications sectors.
In the fourth quarter, South Korea was the only country that declined year-on-year due to slow market demand prior to the presidential elections in December.
Only Hong Kong and Singapore, currently gripped by economic worries, posted declines for the whole of last year.
Tablet PCs have shown "surprisingly strong" demand among consumers in countries such as Singapore and Australia, IDC said.
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