Gadgets, News - Monday, December 19, 2011 10:56 - 7 Comments

Apple claims second position in Aussie PC market

news For the first time, Apple has overtaken Acer and Dell in PC unit shipments in the Australia and New Zealand market to claim second position behind HP. This could be the effect of its retail store expansion and the launch of the Macbook Air Sandy Bridge refresh model.

The record, disclosed by analyst firm IDC in a statement this week, is interesting in a market where overall PC sales have dropped 8% quarter on quarter (QoQ) in Q3 2011 to 1.61 million units. But the market went up by 3% compared to Q3 2010, thanks to the heavy sales promotions by national retailers such as Harvey Norman who had a ‘Buy one get one free offer’ that strongly pushed sales. At the end of Q3 2011, according to IDC, HP leads with a market share of 22%, followed by Apple with 15%, Acer with 14%, Dell with 13% and Toshiba with 9%.

In Australia, the deteriorating European economy, concerns over the carbon tax implementation and short supply of AMD processers in the self-assembled PC market further added to the drop in sales this quarter. The Rugby World Cup that greatly boosted New Zealand’s economy and customer attitudes adversely impacted IT spending as funds were diverted to non-IT products.

Speaking about the performance of HP this quarter, IDC market analyst Amy Cheah said, “While most vendors’ performance slowed in Q3, HP, in particular, took the strongest hit. There were delays in government project rollouts while HP’s channels cut back in stock intake as a precautionary measure in view of market softness.” Cheah added, “The unfortunate ‘PSG spin off’ debacle also momentarily affected confidence in HP’s strategic outlook which opened a window of opportunity for competitors such as Apple to gain share.”

IDC analysts are expecting a growth of 10% next quarter with shipment numbers reaching 1.77 million units as year-end seasonal sales and education rollouts begin. Flooding in Thailand had caused an industry-wide shortage of hard disk drives (HDD). However this is not expected to impact Q4 sales since orders for Q4 were placed before the flooding incident. Large educational deals in Queensland and New South Wales are expected to lead the growth in Q4. However the impact of the HDD shortage is expected to be felt in the first quarter of next year.

Cheah also said that the effect of the shortage in HDD supply will impact end users as vendors will skip promotions and focus on premium products leading to an increase in price of end products. “Industry leaders with the economies of scale advantage and flexibility to manage allocation may see competitive opportunities arise out of this situation,” said Cheah.

Image credit: Apple