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UAE’s PC market suffers a setback in sales

Dubai, June 6, 2014

The UAE’s personal computer (PC) market has suffered a 13.76 per cent fall in sales as vendors were focusing more on tablets and smartphones in the first quarter of this year, said a report.
 
The laptop and and desktop sales during the period stood at 478,140 units compared to 554,449 during the same period last year, said the Gulf News report.
 
“Although the top three vendors (HP, Dell and Lenovo) saw a modest year-on-year growth in the quarter, this couldn’t prevent the market from declining as most of the other vendors experienced a yearly decline” Victoria Mendes, a research analyst at International Data Corporation (IDC), was quoted as saying.
 
According to IDC, the laptop market suffered the most with a 14.57 per cent fall while the desktop market fell by 10.44 per cent.
 
“A number of PC vendors are expected to shift more focus towards tablets as well as newer PC product categories like the ultra-slim notebooks and convertible notebooks in order to lessen, if not neutralise, their losses from the declining traditional PC market,” she added.
 
Meanwhile, the tablet market rose by 41.87 per cent during the same period, said the report.
 
The PC market is expected to continue its free fall in the second quarter also but in the third quarter, it is expected to register a small spike due to Gitex shipments, it said.
 
“The UAE PC market is expected to suffer at the hands of a very rapidly growing tablet market in 2014,” Mendes was quoted as saying.
 
The competition in the tablet market is high, with tablets from unbranded vendors eating into the branded tablet sales in the entry level, said the report.
 
The unbranded tablet manufacturers occupied around 30 per cent market share in the first quarter volume, it said.
 
The huge growth in tablets was mainly driven by ‘unbranded manufacturers initially’ due to the ‘price factor,’ but we are entering a new phase where consumers will prefer quality products than the price factor, it added.
 
The tablet market is expected to see a year-on-year growth of 19.4 per cent for the full year, the IDC official added.



Tags: UAE | Mobile | Sales | PC | Fall | Tablet |

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