IDC slashes forecasts for local sales

Because of the length and severity of the flooding crisis, research firm International Data Corp Thailand has unveiled revised forecasts for the local markets for information-technology service and personal computers this year. 

It also predicts that the effects of the crisis will be felt into the first half of next year.

Attaphone Satidkanitkul, research manager at IDC Thailand, said the company now forecast that the worst-case scenario for the IT-service spending would be for a drop of 3-4 per cent from the Bt44.527 billion previously predicted for 2011. 

IDC’s worst case assumes the flood crisis is prolonged to the end of the year.

“In the event that the flood waters take longer than expected to subside, extending to the new-year period, IDC predicts that this scenario will generate a high impact on IT-service spending, especially from the manufacturing and public sectors,” Attaphone said.

Meanwhile, the overall PC market – including desktop computers, laptops and Windows-platform tablets – is expected to drop by about 500,000 units from the previously forecast shipment of 4 million units this year.

“On average, in each quarter, the PC market is about 1 million unit shipments, but the flooding has decreased PC sales in the fourth quarter by about 500,000 units. 

“In the fourth quarter, the PC market in Thailand is forecast to drop to minus-10 per cent,” Attaphone said.

The firm also confirmed that the effects of the flooding crisis on the IT-service and PC markets would continue into the first half of next year.

It expects the market will return to normal within the third quarter of 2012, in terms of IT service spending, PC pricing, and growth rate. 

However, the entire PC market in Thailand throughout next year is now predicted to expand by less than 10 per cent, which is lower than the normal growth of 10-20 per cent, said Jarit Sidhu, associate analyst for the PC market at IDC Thailand.

 

Price hikes  

“The drop in the PC market will be prolonged into the first half of 2012, mainly because of a supplies shortage. PC pricing has risen by more than 10 per cent from normal prices. 

It has been affected by the flooding, which has hit the supply of main PC parts, especially hard disk drives, and increased HDD prices by about 30-100 per cent per unit, depending on the model and series. PC prices will be back to normal in the third quarter of next year,” Jarit said.

However, this year’s market for media tablets – which IDC regards as tablets using the iOS, Android and BlackBerry platforms – is still experiencing healthy growth, expanding from the previous forecast of 150,000 units to between 400,000 and 500,000 units.

On the other hand, the netbook market this year is expected to decrease to just 150,000 units, rather than the more than 200,000 units previously forecast. Some 200,000 netbooks were sold last year. 

Thailand’s smart-phone market this year has witnessed strong growth, as forecast, with an estimated 3.3 million to 3.5 million unit sales, representing growth of 70-80 per cent, IDC said. 

The company highlighted three main enterprise sectors that have been hurt by the severe flooding: manufacturing, notably automotive, fast-moving consumer goods, and hi-tech industry; the public sector, which will delay existing IT projects and might spend less on new IT project, as the government needs to spend heavily on flood relief; and the telecommunications sector. 

The third sector has, however, been positively affected in some domains, such as mobile operators and telecom infrastructure service providers.