Slow growth forecast for Gulf PC market

Dubai The Gulf PC market is expected to grow at a slow pace of 1.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year, partly due to the growth in media tablets and with no major projects coming to the fore. \"This is the first time since 2009 that the Gulf PC market will be attaining such a slow growth,\" Fouad Rafiq Charakla, research manager at IDC Middle East, Africa and Turkey, told Gulf News. He said overall PC prices will decline by four per cent. Notebook prices are expected to decline faster than desktop prices mainly due to the aggression by vendors. Portable prices are expected to be $711 (Dh2,611). Desktop shipments will decline by five per cent and portable PCs will increase by three per cent while the market value will decline by three per cent to $1.057 billion in the first quarter. \"The tightening of Iran sanctions and the resulting devaluation of the rial could hit re-exports badly, but there is a possibility that a portion of those shipments might get routed to different destinations in the region. During 2011, more than 50 per cent of laptop shipments into the UAE were re-exported,\" he said. In the UAE, PC shipments are expected to rise by a mere 1.2 per cent to 656,364 units compared to 648,275 units in first quarter of 2011. Saudi Arabia is expected to witness a strong growth of 6.9 per cent to 632,139 units while the rest of the Gulf countries are expected to suffer a fall of 11.9 per cent to 211,661 units compared to 240,238 units in the first quarter of last year. In the fourth quarter of last year, PC shipments grew 6.4 per cent year on year to 1.57 million units despite the shortage of hard disk drives due to flooding in Thailand. \"The market had an impact on the shortage of hard disk drives globally, but we did not face much impact as we manufacture our own HDD. The prices had gone up between 5 and 10 per cent. The prices are expected to stabilise in the second quarter,\" Denzil D\'Souza, business head of notebooks at Samsung Gulf Electronics, said. He said new form factors will fuel demand in the industry this year. Hardware specs are getting stronger and mobile PCs are getting lighter. Adoption of ultrabooks will gain momentum this year. Ultrabooks are light but they compromise on certain aspects. We will be launching ultrabooks with DVD drives soon. According to Jack lee, Corporate Vice-President of Lenovo Group and General Manager for Lenovo Middle East and Africa, new form factors and ultrabooks will ignite demand this year. But ultrabook prices need to come down to around $700 instead of the current $1,000 plus to steal a big chunk of the market. \"Desktops in the Gulf region suffered more than a 10 per cent fall year on year despite a big education deal of around 40,000 units in Saudi Arabia while the UAE witnessed a decline of around 20,000 units compared to the fourth quarter of 2010,\" Charakla said. Portables were the driving force by registering a 10.6 per cent year on year rise during the fourth quarter of 2011. Portable prices stood at $722 in the fourth quarter of last year compared to $778 in the fourth quarter of 2010.  From gulfnews