China Drags APAC PC Market Down In Q2 2013: IDC

IDC’s preliminary results show that the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) PC market declined 1 percent from last quarter and 11 percent year-on-year in 2013 Q2 to reach 26.7 million units, coming in marginally lower than IDC’s initial forecasts.

Weak sell-in for much of Q2 amid ongoing consumer distractions, such as phones and tablets, as well as a slowing economy affected the PC market performance in China, which pulled the entire region down as well. While consumer sentiment in the rest of region was also tepid, a higher-than-expected shipment for a large education notebook project in India helped to offset some of this decline.

“The second half of this year still faces a number of challenges such as economic and channel conditions in China as well as uncertainty around an education project in India,” says Handoko Andi, Research Manager at IDC Asia/Pacific. “It’s possible for the market to bottom out and recover by 2014 as technology evolves, but IDC confidence is low at the moment given all of the forces tugging at each other right now.”

Weakness in the China market continued to affect Lenovo’s performance as it declined in unit terms year-on-year, although a seasonal recovery in China and strong performance in ASEAN helped the vendor improve share on a sequential basis. HP’s jump in share and year-on-year growth was largely driven by the vendor’s fulfillment of a very large education notebook project in India. Dell dropped back after a strong start to the year, while Acer and ASUS continued to struggle amid tepid consumer buying sentiments as all three vendors declined in unit terms on a year-on-year basis.