According to the latest report from research firm IDC, the Philippine PC market grew by 18 percent sequentially QoQ but declined 15 percent Year-on-Year (YoY), to reach a total of 462,000 units in 1Q 2013.
Channels brought in higher levels of stocks across all brands this quarter after clearing ageing inventory last quarter. Sales of touchscreen Windows 8 notebooks also picked up as end-users warmed up to the new user experience offered by these devices. But these improvements were not enough to arrest the YoY slide in the market.
“Despite the improvement in consumer PC shipments, IDC expects vendors to find it difficult to match their year-on-year sales in 2013,” said Juan-Jin Ng, market analyst for client devices research at IDC Asia-Pacific.
“Mini-notebooks which were a significant volume driver in 2012 are being phased out this year. The market has yet to identify a replacement form factor which can match the price and popularity of mini-notebooks,” he explained.
IDC has consequently lowered its forecast for the Philippines PC market.
Daniel Pang, Asean research manager for client devices at IDC Asia-Pacific commented, “The onslaught of entry-level tablets and smartphones are expected to have an adverse impact on the PC market in the upcoming quarters. Tablets like Asus’ MemoPad, and smartphones like Cherry Mobile’s Candy TV are bound to attract end users, especially with telco subsidies making these devices even cheaper to own.”
Asus improved significantly this quarter by pushing higher volumes of touchscreen notebooks into the retail market. Acer may be gaining share sequentially, but is declining drastically YoY due to falling demand for its mini-notebooks as well as increased competition from other vendors.
