Indonesia’s burgeoning personal computer (PC) market - divided between desktops and notebooks including the increasingly popular netbooks - will continue to see hefty growth next year, setting off even fiercer competition among top players.
This year sales of PCs are predicted to hit US$2 billion, from a recorded $1.8 billion in 2008, and are expected to grow again by between 20 and 25 percent next year, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market research company.
Against this backdrop, PT Acer Indonesia is upbeat about retaining market leader status despite a blip in the third quarter resulting in Hewlett Packard taking over the top spot, although Acer remained the undisputed leader overall in the January-September period.
Acer Indonesia president director, Jason Lim, said in an interview earlier this week that he was confident that sales in notebooks, including increasingly popular netbooks, would play a vital role in improving its performance.
Sales of notebooks represent about 60 percent of the total PC market in the country.
“Acer still has the biggest market share in Indonesia if you count the first two quarters of the year,” Jason said of the third quarter decline.
As of September, the company held 19.5 percent of the national market share from January to September this year, followed by HP with 16.8 percent. The third biggest market player was Toshiba with 6.4 percent.
In the third quarter alone, HP snatched 20.7 percent of the PC market against Acer’s 19.7 percent. Jason said Acer was counting on sales in notebooks to improve to retain its position as the country’s biggest PC vendor in 2010. According to IDC, national notebook sales have the potential to increase by 35 percent to about 2.5 million units next year.
During the third quarter of 2009, Acer took 27.6 percent of the notebook market share in Indonesia, down from 28.2 percent in the previous quarter. Trailing closely behind Acer was HP with 26.5 percent of the notebook market share in quarter three, up from 18.5 percent in quarter two.
Jason said that even sales in desktop computers still could make a significant contribution to the company’s performance in 2010.
National desktop sales continued to slide as a proportion of all PC sales over the past few years.
The desktop sales up to September this year only accounted for 40 percent of national PC sales. It previously dominated with 60 percent in 2007, before slipping to 55 percent last year. But the number of units sold continues to increase, IDC said.
Jason said he matched his expectation with IDC’s for desktop sales to increase by 7 percent, or 1,360,745 units, next year. (adh)
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