The number of personal computers in use worldwide will more than double by 2010, powered by China, India and Indonesia, technology analysts Forrester Research said on Tuesday.
PCs in use will soar to nearly 1.3 billion at the end of the decade from 575 million now, it predicted in a report, titled "Sizing The Emerging-Nation PC Market."
Mature markets in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific would add 150 million new PCs to the world market by 2010, it said.
By contrast, 566 million new PCs would be used in emerging markets, up from 75 million last year, a 31-percent compound annual growth rate.
The battle in emerging markets would pit industry leaders Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co against local manufacturers, and "fundamentally change the rules of the game," Forrester said.
Price would be the key to faster adoption of computers, it said.
"Today's products from Western PC vendors won't dominate in those markets in the long term," Forrester senior analyst Simon Yates said.
"Instead, local PC makers like Lenovo Group Ltd (
China's Lenovo stunned the world last week when it announced the purchase of IBM Corp's global PC operations at a price of US$1.75 billion in cash, stock and debt.
According to Forrester, Western PC manufacturers would win the first round in emerging markets, but local manufacturers would dominate in the long term.
The first phase of computer users in emerging countries, wealthy city dwellers, would buy from Western firms like Dell, HP and IBM.
In the second wave, middle-class literate people were expected to be targeted by local manufacturers offering cheaper machines.
The rural mass market was a "long-term challenge," Forrester said.
"They are likely to choose PC alternatives, such as smartphones," it predicted.
Forrester said computer manufacturers must develop a new generation of PC products that are affordable, simple, localized, useful, durable and serviceable.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by