Trade figures show steep decline in demand for desktop PCs

In the previous year, shipments in the commercial market had contracted by only 1.4 per cent as the two biggest economies in the region – China and Japan – offset the impact of big education projects shipped to India and Thailand and were not repeated. In Japan especially, this increase was a result of  a boost in demand from businesses and governments to secure a supply of PCs running Windows 7 before the deadline for the last Windows 7 shipments. Despite an eventual decision by Microsoft to extend this deadline, many companies and government bodies went ahead with the purchases. 
The consumer market for traditional PC shipments also continued its decline, dropping by 9.5 per cent for the total year 2016 amid ongoing soft demand coming from end-users across the region. 
Consumer desktops were particularly affected, with shipments dropping by as much as 17.7 per cent in the fourth quarter. 
Notebook shipments stabilised in the fourth quarter, with consumer demand in China picking up in recent months and consumer notebook shipments in the country reaching 7 per cent year-over-year growth in the final quarter. New PC designs drove this recovery.
Maciek Gornicki, research manager for Client Devices Research at IDC Asia-Pacific, said that thin and light notebooks with high resolution screens seemed to be extremely popular among end-users and are likely to drive demand for PC renewals in China and other parts of the Asia/Pacific region in coming years.
The Consumer PC market also seems to benefit from an uptake in demand for gaming PCs, which were expected to continue to grow in share in the overall devices sales in the future. Many vendors have increased focus and efforts to boost their gaming PCs portfolio in recent quarters, with several new gaming brands coming into the market and many interesting products announced at CES.
Similar to worldwide PC trends, Asia/Pacific is witnessing continued market consolidation in the PC industry. The top three players now hold 51.4 per cent share in the market compared to 45 per cent three years ago. 
However, year 2017 is expected to remain challenging. The market is likely to see stabilisation, especially in the commercial space. Although smaller economies are likely to remain impacted by weak currencies and adverse economic conditions, China and Japan expect more corporate renewals in the coming year, while India may enjoy another wave of big roll-outs in the education sector.
IDC currently expects consumer PC shipments to decline by 3 per cent and the commercial PC market to see a 1 per cent growth in 2017 in the Asia-Pacific region.