India is Asia Pacific's fourth largest PC market: IDC
New York, February 19
India has emerged as the fourth largest market for personal computers (PCs) in the Asia-Pacific region in 1999, excluding Japan.
India, which replaced Taiwan as the fourth largest market after China, South Korea and Australia, had more than a million units of shipment for the first time in 1999, according to preliminary results of a market review released by the International Data Corporation (IDC).
According to IDC, India registered a growth of more than 42 per cent that was supported by consumers, small businesses and falling price points in a particularly price-sensitive market.
Kitty Fok, research manager at IDC Asia-Pacific, said the results showed that the Asian PC market returned to the fast track in 1999 after two very tumultuous years.
"Looking forward, conditions such as low PC penetration, particularly in vast untapped markets like China and India, falling prices, growing awareness and the Internet will enable Asia to regain its position as the hottest PC market in the world," Fok said. In contrast to 1998, every country market generated positive annual growth in 1999, ranging between 12 per cent in Vietnam to a high of over 273 per cent in Indonesia.
However, growth in markets such as Indonesia, Korea and Thailand was artificially high because these markets experienced the worst conditions during the regional economic crisis. Apart from the economic recovery which, IDC said, was the greatest market accelerator in 1999, other factors that contributed to the market's momentum throughout the year, were Internet proliferation, price erosion and low PC penetration.
IDC noted that while there was a Y2K sales disruption in the large and medium business sectors of developed markets in the last quarter, strong buying from consumers and small businesses offset the impact.
Competitively, IBM reclaimed the market's top spot in 1999 as its market share increased from 8.1 per cent to 8.4 per cent, followed by Compaq with a market share of 7.3 % for the year.
-Hindustan Times(IANS) |
