Gulf PC shipments to touch 6.7m this year

Dubai: Total personal computer (PC) shipments for this year in the Gulf are expected to touch 6.7 million, a growth of 10.6 per cent compared to 6.1 million units in 2011.

"Apart from the consumer segment, one of the main driving forces for the growth is expected to be the education sector. New projects are expected to happen in the latter part of the year," Fouad Rafiq Charakla, research manager at IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey, told Gulf News.

He said the market value is expected to reach $4.7 billion (Dh17.2 billion), a growth of 7.5 per cent compared to $4.3 billion in 2011.

"Mini-notebooks are expected to decline further in the years to come, but the demand is expected to continue till 2016.

"This year, mini-notebook shipments are expected to suffer a 25 per cent decline in the Gulf region," he said.

"Mini-notebooks are mainly used as secondary PCs. The main reason for their decline, he said, was that consumers have more options for secondary computing devices, such as media tablets. At the same time, many consumers have also realised the performance limitations of mini-notebooks. Furthermore, vendors are also losing interest in this device as its margins are very low. Many vendors are already pulling out of this sub-form factor in the region," Charakla said.

Denzil D'Souza, business head of notebooks at Samsung Gulf Electronics, said that "even though many vendors are exiting the netbook segment and prices are falling, we will be there. Demand for netbooks will be there as along as Intel manufactures its Atom processor due to its form factor and price."

Dependent on price

Ultrabooks haven't picked up momentum so far, he said, adding that the growth is highly dependent on price. Only if prices start falling and go below $800, there will be a spurt in demand.

According to Santosh Varghese, general manager, Computer Systems Division, Toshiba Gulf, ultrabooks will arrest the growth of media tablets. Media tablets are not a productive tool. They are only used as second PCs, he said.

Ultrabooks will eat up around 30 per cent of the laptop category this year.

"It will take time for ultrabooks to pick up and by mid of this year we can see a big growth," Varghese said.

"Windows 8 will be a massive driver for ultrabooks when Microsoft and Intel's next-gen Ivy Bridge chips are released later this year and drive down shipments of netbooks just a third of today's volumes by 2016," Daniel Ashdown, research analyst at Juniper Research, said.

"Ultrabooks will achieve over 40 per cent market share by 2015. Ultrabooks will represent 43 per cent of global notebook PC shipments in 2015, up from two per cent last year and 13 per cent this year.

Attractive price

"Ultrabook penetration of the notebook market will increase rapidly, rising to 28 per cent in 2013 and to 38 per cent in 2014," Len Jelinek, research director and analyst, semiconductor manufacturing at IHS iSuppli, said.

"If an attractive price point can be achieved and the consumer deems this a must-have product, the entire semiconductor manufacturing supply chain could rapidly reorient itself to serve the fast-growing ultrabook market," said Jelinek.