MANILA, Philippines — PC shipments to the Philippines stagnated to a meager 1.5-percent growth in the 2nd quarter of the year, with leaders Acer and Samsung losing market share due to overstocking problems, research firm IDC reported recently.
Smaller PC vendors, IDC noted, outperformed both Acer and Samsung during the quarter as the former launched “aggressive pricing and hardware bundling strategies.”
The total number of PC units shipped within the quarter amounted to 551,000, more than half of which were consumer-grade notebooks.
While waning in numbers, the desktop form factor still turned out to be dominant during the 2nd quarter of the year, with over five desktops sold for every four notebooks, IDC found.
During the period, netbooks — or mininotebooks, as IDC calls it — gained renewed prominence among Filipino consumers as the smaller vendors were able to resolve the shortage of netbook processors reported in previous quarters.
“MNC PC brands are starting to encroach upon the market share of one another as the consumer market is not expanding at a rapid enough pace,” explained Juan-Jin Ng, market analyst for client devices research at IDC Asia/Pacific.
“As PC prices grow even more homogenous across most major brands, we will eventually see the stranglehold of the top 2 vendors on the retail market declining over the coming quarters,” he added.
Public-sector PC deployments, IDC noted, grew to a standstill during the second quarter, but incremental rollouts by the Department of Education helped boost commercial PC shipments to a 1.7 percent growth.
IDC believes the resilient Philippine economy, which grew by a rate of 5.9 percent from April to June, had likely contributed to a still positive growth rate during the period.
“The resilience of the economy in the Philippines to the global economic crises as well as the commitment of the current government towards IT spending has kept the overall commercial segment outlook positive,” Juan-Jin added.
Prospects aren’t too bright in the third quarter of the year for PC shipments, though, as vendors hold off on stocking current models in anticipation of Windows 8, due to be released on October 26.
“As such, the PC market should see a boost only in Q4. However, the PC market should find temporary respite in the commercial segment as government and enterprise spending, especially from BPOs, are expected to get underway in Q3,” the IDC analyst said.
source: interaksyon.com
