Although the saturated Information technology (IT) market in Taiwan is continuing on a general downtrend, consumers are still buying laptops, German market research and advisory firm GfK Group said on Wednesday.
According to GfK’s point-of-sales tracking, January to April saw the total value of Taiwan’s IT market fall by 19 percent from a year earlier, while the sales volume was down by 8 percent — an indication that the market has been cushioned somewhat by lower price points.
“Taiwan’s IT market is considered mature, to a point where the penetration level of IT products has reached saturation,” managing director for GfK in Taiwan Cindy Li said.
“However, consumer attraction toward portability and convenience has been fueling demand for mobile computers [laptops], in particular the ultra-thin models,” Li wrote in a report.
In terms of sales value, laptops, tablets and desktop computers are the top three revenue-generating products in Taiwan’s IT sector, according to GfK.
While tablets and PCs reported significantly weakened sales volume of 36 and 25 percent respectively, laptops bucked the downtrend by selling 3 percent more in volume in the first four months of the year compared with the same period last year, GfK said.
The research group said that laptops are the biggest contributor to revenue in the nation’s IT market, accounting for 42 percent of the total this year.
“The mobile computing market in Taiwan is likely to sustain its positive performance achieved from the beginning of the year, thanks to the rising popularity of the Ultrabook and entertainment models, which are anticipated to continue fueling growth,” Li said. “Moving forward into the second half of the year, this growing product segment will take an even larger slice of Taiwan’s IT sector to replace the shrinking desktop computing and tablet markets.”
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