PC shipments to S'pore suffer Q2 dip
According to preliminary figures released by Gartner Dataquest, a unit of Gartner Group Inc, PC shipments to Singapore dipped 0.3 percent to 125,613 units in the quarter year-on-year.
Korea and Australia led in the decline with a negative 19.8 percent and negative 10.5 percent growth rate, respectively (see table below).
Besides feeling the "brunt of the US economic slowdown", Singapore, Korea, Australia and Hong Kong are also "matured markets" that experienced relatively slower growth, Dataquest senior analyst Lillian Tay explained.
Meanwhile, Malaysia seemed to have defied the cautionary spending trend, growing 51.8 percent in the second quarter over the previous year, the highest rate in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan).
Such an exceptional rate was in part due to the Malaysian government's efforts to equip every home with a PC, and the higher investments in school computer labs, Tay noted.
However, its relatively higher growth rate was also due to the country's "low base" of PC users, she added.
In terms of unit shipments, China remained the largest with over 2 million units shipped to the country in the second quarter. This represented a growth of 25 percent year-on-year.
"Growth was moderate as there weren't many new projects from the professional segment, (coupled with) a wait-and-see attitude on the outcome of the Olympic 2008 bid," Tay noted.
As for India, which grew 48.5 percent year-on-year, Tay explained that the relatively higher growth rate was due to Gartner's bigger survey size in India that quarter.
However, quarter-on-quarter comparison for the Indian market has shown just a marginal rise, as the June quarter marked the beginning of the financial year--and thus budget planning--for many companies, she added.
For the Philippines and Indonesia, political and economic uncertainties continue to plague their IT markets, Tay noted.
On the whole, however, Dataquest predicted that PC shipments to Asia Pacific grew 9.1 percent in the second quarter from a year-ago period, while quarter-over-quarter growth was flat.
Worldwide, PC shipments in the quarter dipped 1.9 percent to 30.4 million units, the first decline since 1986.
Asia Pacific PC Server Shipment
| Q2, 2001 unit shipment | Growth from Q2, 2000 | Growth from Q1, 2001 | |
| China | 2,032,639 | 25.0% | 6.9% |
| Korea | 700,787 | -19.8% | -17.0% |
| Australia | 498,535 | -10.5% | 4.0% |
| India | 365,704 | 48.5% | 5.8% |
| Taiwan | 266,606 | 1.1% | 1.4% |
| Malaysia | 153,949 | 51.8% | 5.2% |
| Hong Kong | 147,760 | -0.5% | 2.2% |
| Singapore | 125,613 | -0.3% | -9.6% |
| Indonesia | 96,254 | 8.1% | -11.1% |
| Thailand | 107,004 | 14.6% | 3.8% |
| New Zealand | 76,367 | 10.3% | 3.6% |
| Philippines | 60,381 | -0.1% | -3.7% |
| Vietnam | 32,190 | 10.0% | 2.7% |
| Rest of Asia/Pacific | 37,812 | 47.9% | 12.8% |
| Asia Pacific | 4,701,601 | 9.1% | 0.5% |