Gaming stabilises Singapore PC market

Article By : IDC

An increase in gaming demand, IT trade shows and commercial fulfilments have contributed in stabilising Singapore's traditional PC market.

The growing demand for mobile devices reflected a weak market performance for desktop PC product categories, according to IDC. The desktop PC categories experienced a 23.7% decline in year-over-year (YoY) growth in Q1 of 2017. Notably, the notebook PC market recorded a 5.1% increase in YoY growth.

The traditional PC shipments in Singapore showed a mild decline by 2.1% YoY growth, with a total number of 243,000 units of PCs shipped into the market in Q1 2017.

A range of activities, such as the increase in gaming PC demand, occurring IT trade show and commercial fulfilments, helped in stabilising the PC market throughout Q1. The increase in the momentum of the market was driven by commercial fulfilment within the government sector as well as the public sector, which outperformed the rest of the market, with shipment deliveries to the IDA/GovTech agency.

Multiple companies participated in this project and Chromebooks were amongst the deliveries. In the consumer space, the desire to own desktop PCs decreased because end-users no longer see advantages in a stationary device. Aside from the existence of notebook PCs, high-performing smartphones and tablets in the market are believed to have become a practical option. The only area where desktop consumer demand could be sustained is the gaming sector.

Figure 1: Singapore traditional PC market top vendor shares for Q1 2017. Source: IDC Asia Pacific Quarterly PC Tracker, July 2017.

“Initially the market was affected negatively by shortage of PC components which led to the hike in average selling price of the overall PC products. As much as the overall PC market is shrinking, the occurrence of multiple events in the first quarter was a resistance for the market from further declining. These contributing factors were seen across the commercial and consumer segments as well,’’ said Feras Ibrahim, Senior Analyst, AP Client Devices

Ibrahim continued, “After the first quarter, we predict that Q2 will continue to experience versatile market dynamics. IDC expects the market to remain stagnant with 4.8% YoY growth decline. Similar to Q1, we foresee the PC market to be stimulated by IT trade shows, newly established retail channel outlets, as well as on-going planned deliveries to the government and banking sectors.”

Competition in the gaming space is increasing and we have seen a new local player, Dreamcore, entering the market recently with their customisable smallest gaming desktop in the market. Additionally, competition is expected to heat up due to AMD’s newly launched Ryzen CPU that is positioned as one of the high-performing CPU and is seen to be a direct threat to Intel CPUs that are expected to ship in Q2 2017.

Gaming PCs will continue to be one of the highest revenue generating products within the traditional PC market. Hence, multinational companies are expected to keep their focus on gaming PCs. Market performance for the second half of 2017 is expected to plunge compared to the first half of 2017. The deliveries to the education sector and other sectors could potentially contribute to stronger shipments.