Local PC sales on the way up despite tablet challenge

Anthony Caruana
Wednesday, 15 December 2010 22:32

IT Industry - Market

According to International Data Corporation's (IDC), 3Q10 PC tracker, the Australian PC market gained 16% year-on-year to reach 1.4 million units in 3Q 2010 as the economy continued to expand. All of this sounds like positive news in the face of the challenge that Apple and their iPad have put to the traditional PC market.

The news is not all great. Sequentially, the market dipped by 5%, although this was expected as the period is traditionally weaker on the back of 2Q. Amy Cheah, market analyst at IDC said that "Although we anticipated a decline, it turned out to be less significant than initially expected. Vendors, in particular Acer, were pulling some pretty aggressive pricing moves in major retail stores such as Harvey Norman to attract attention back to the consumer space."

Demand in desktops remains buoyant with increasing demand in all-in-one devices and refreshes of fleets to Intel's Core ix processors and Windows 7 in the enterprise sector. IDC also expects the recent confirmation of a whole of Federal Government PC panel for Oct 2010 to end of 2013 was confirmed to sustain desktop demand going forward.

"Apple surprised everyone by taking back its top 5 spot, lost to Lenovo in the last quarter, making 3Q one of its best quarters in Australia," said Cheah. The local figures match up with Apple's overall results when they sold 3.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 27 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. With the success of Apple stores and not to mention a spillover effect from the iPad hype, Apple is well positioned to continue enjoying sustained growth in the upcoming quarters.

"Lenovo's strong reliance on the NSW Digital Education Revolution Program deal had helped it gain share in the past few quarters, but the slowdown in 3Q roll out to schools resulted in a drop in its market position."