Continued double-digit growth for Asia/Pacific PC market in 2Q10

SINGAPORE & HONG KONG: IDC's preliminary results show that the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) PC market grew 15 percent sequentially and 36 percent year-on-year in 2Q10 to reach 27 million units, with nearly all countries posting double-digit year-on-year growth rates.

The region was just 1 percent below forecast, as stronger-than-expected desktop PC shipments helped to offset the shortfall in portable PCs.

"Portable PC shipments in markets like China and Indonesia came in short of our aggressive forecasts this quarter," said Bryan Ma, Associate Vice President of Asia/Pacific Devices and Peripherals Research at IDC. "But heavy demand for notebooks will still be a key driver in the upcoming years despite potential competitive pressure coming from media tablets like Apple's iPad."

Fortunately, Thailand was able to recover more quickly than expected toward the end of the quarter as the political turmoil in the months prior subsided, thus helping the entire market there. Singapore was also on track despite earlier concerns about limited sales at the quarterly PC show.

"Hong Kong was a bit slow given early notebook purchases and channel stocking in the previous quarter," said Kathy Sin, Manager of Asia/Pacific Client Devices Research at IDC. "But the retail channel remains a key driver, with some vendors shipping heavy volumes toward the end of the quarter in order to prepare for the summer promotions.”

Lenovo continued to lead the region while rival HP continued its downward slide, in part as it came off its strong performance in China last year. The commercial sector helped Dell sustain its third-place position given the vendor's historical strengths in that space.