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Laptop business keeps Dell upbeat

"We think that the laptop is going to continue to be a big driver for growth."

Michael Dell, Dell Inc chief executive officer

Dell Inc's business is experiencing fast growth in Asia and the outlook for laptop computers is bright, chief executive officer Michael Dell said yesterday.

"Dell experienced 41 percent unit growth in Asia Pacific and Japan region" in the fourth quarter, Michael Dell, founder and chairman of the world's second-largest PC maker, told reporters in Seoul.

He said that in the fourth quarter the company's laptop business in the Asia-Pacific region grew over 70 percent.

Industry research firm IDC estimates the laptop business is growing about 21 percent year-on-year in the region, he said.

"We think that the laptop is going to continue to be a big driver for growth for our business here and all over the world," he said.

He said growth in the company's shipments will probably exceed the market's, helped by demand from the Asia-Pacific region.

"I expect Dell will grow faster than the industry," he said, without specifying figures or a timeframe. "I think our growth is pretty consistent with the fourth-quarter level."

Shipments in the Asia-Pacific region will probably rise 16.9 percent this year, outpacing the 9.7 percent projected for worldwide growth, according to estimates this month at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Dell is counting on growth in emerging markets to counter weakness in the US, where customers such as financial-services firms are reining in spending on technology.

The company, based in Round Rock, Texas, last month reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit and revenue that missed analyst estimates. Fourth-quarter profit dropped 6.4 percent in the quarter ending Feb. 1, it said.

Michael Dell also said his company has become the number one provider of servers in the US and China. Servers are computers that store large amounts of data for distribution to individual users.

Separately, Dell said demand for computer memory chips is growing "quite fast," helped by Microsoft Corp's Windows Vista operating system.
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