PC shipments up 15% in Q3 in APAC

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE: Nearly 6.52 million personal computers were shipped in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan during the third quarter. This marks an increase of 15 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, International Data Corp said, driven by seasonal growth in China.

As usual, China's Legend Group was the largest vendor in the region, shipping 894,500 PCs during the quarter, an increase of 22.9 percent from the year-earlier quarter. IDC said it expected just less than 30 million PCs to be shipped in Asia-Pacific in 2003, an 18 percent increase over its forecast for 2002.

Personal computer shipments in the region exceeded the 6 million mark for the first time in the third quarter buoyed by a strong Chinese market. "The breakthrough of this mental milestone should serve to encourage the industry during such gloomy times," Bryan Ma, IDC's research manager said in a statement. "But the main reason for this growth was seasonal activity in the enormous Chinese PC market."

"Although other countries grew as well, a full recovery in the region could still take some time given the worldwide economic uncertainty prevalent today," Ma added. A seasonal rise in third quarter PC shipments in China is usually due to summer sales and education purchases, IDC said. Government projects were another key driver in China as local vendors stepped up e-government initiatives.

Among PC vendors, Legend was followed by HP and IBM in third place. Following is a table of PC shipments in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, by vendor:

Q3 2002 SHIPMENT ('000)

Legend-- 894.5

HP* --525.9

IBM --412

Dell-- 314.9

Founder-- 263.4

Samsung-- 230.8

Others-- 3,882.1

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TOTAL 6,523.6

*Note: HP includes Compaq shipments

 

© Reuters