The PC market is slowing in mature markets and most future opportunities will be found in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America, while Microsoft's Vista operating system is not expected to have a big impact on the PC industry, an analyst said yesterday.
Vice president of International Data Corp (IDC) Bob O'Donnell said that last year PC sales in mature markets including North America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), totaled 46 million units more than those shipped to emerging markets.
But the gap will close to about 15 million units by 2011, O'Donnell said at an IDC forum.
Therefore, PC makers should think hard about grabbing the attention of consumers who have become picky about their choice of computer.
"Specifications for most notebook computer brands are similar and radical design changes will be the key differentiation," O'Donnell said, adding that buyers demand notebooks with better design, like the wide variety offered by cellphone makers.
Computer makers including Acer Inc have identified the trend.
Acer, the world's third-largest computer maker, this month unveiled a brand new "Gemstone" design for its "Aspire" range of consumer notebooks, following the launch of its previous "Folio" design three years earlier.
The Taiwanese maker is hoping its machines will stand out from others, boosting average selling prices and helping it gain better profits.
Meanwhile, the launch of Microsoft Corp's Vista operating system in January may not boost computer demand as expected, O'Donnell said.
"The reality is that people are not buying PCs because of Vista; they buy because they need one," he said.
However, hardware contract makers should be ready for a business boost with Vista, as it offers new hardware differentiations not possible with previous operating systems, he said.
These new distinctions include ReadyBoost, a disk caching technology making computers more responsive by using flash memory such as a USB drive; or SideShow, which supports a secondary screen on notebooks to view important information without turning on the computer.
Neither will sales of computer memory chips get a boost from the Vista factor, another IDC analyst said yesterday.
Memory chip makers had anticipated that the launch of Vista would boost chip demand, but overcapacity has pushed prices down below the cost of almost all suppliers, IDC analyst Kim Soo-kyoum said yesterday.
"Average selling prices have fallen by half in the first half of the year and are now below cost price," Kim said.
Kim did not expect rapid adoption of Microsoft's new system until the final quarter of this year, allowing computer memory chip suppliers to take a brief breather.
But, the slowdown may return next year for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips and the industry may experience a slow L-shaped recovery, Kim said.
Revenues of global DRAM suppliers for this year are expected to be almost flat at US$35 billion, Kim said without providing comparative figures.
O'Donnell, meanwhile, gave a conservative outlook on low-priced laptop computers -- such as the "one laptop per child" scheme proposed by Nicholas Negroponte, a cofounder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory, and the Classmate PC developed by chipmaker Intel Corp.
"They are creating new opportunities," O'Donnell said. "But, we believe neither of them are going to be big sellers."
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